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Life 

Talks 



By 
James H. McConkey 



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'A 
Life Talks ^^,6 

A Series of Bible Talks on t' 2 
Christian Life 



By James H. McConkey 



First Edition 



19n 

Published by 

FRED KELKER 

P. O. Box 216 

Harrisburg, Pa., U. S. A. 



6 LIFE TALKS. 

J le has brought us into His great family. And 
tow having saved us, He is going to tram us. Up 
= .iere is the homeland and the glory; down here 
:i the suffering. He is even over-ruling the suf- 
fering to child-train us for the glory. And thus 
v/hat sweetness and preciousness flow forth from 
ihis much mis-understood fragment of His Word 
as we invest it with this its literal significance. 
IvCt us read it into the whole passage and mark 
the blessing in it. 

^ 2}v ^ ^ 

''My son, despise not thou the child-training 
of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked or 
Him: for whom the Lord loveth He child-train- 
eth, and scourgeth every son whom He rcceiveth. 
If ye endure child-training, God dealeth with 
you as with sons: for what son is he whom the 
father child-traineth not? But if ye he without 
child-training, whereof all are partakers, then 
ye are bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we 
have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, 
and we gave them reverence; shall we not much 
rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, 
and live? For they verily for a few days child- 
trained us after their oum pleasure; but He for 
our profit, that zve might be partakers of His 
holiness. Now no child-training for the present 
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless 
afterzvard it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of right- 
eousness unto them which are exercised thereby." 



CHASTENING. 7 

Chastening is for purii^'ication. 

Does God have a grudge agaxnst us? Is God 
trying as it were, to ''get even" with us? Is 
God's "child-training" a kind of parental revenge 
for childish wrong-doing? Oft-times we think 
so. But it is far from the truth. ''For they" 
(our earthly parents) verily for a few days 
child-trained us after their own pleasure, but 
He i^OR OUR PROFIT^ that we might be partakers 
01^ His holiness."' (v. io.) God's one supreme 
purpose in child-training us, is purification. He 
is seeking to purge from us all that mars the like- 
ness of Jesus Christ within us. It is His own 
hoHness that He is seeking to perfect within us. 

A visitor was watching a silversmith heating 
the silver in his crucible. Hotter and hotter grew 
the fires. All the while the smith was closely 
scanning the crucible. Presently the visitor said : 
"Why do you watch the silver so closely? What 
are you looking for?" "I am looking for my 
face," was the answer. "Wlien I see my own 
image in the silver, then I stop. The work is 
done." Why did the silversmith light the fires 
under the silver? To purify and perfect it. Is 
God's child-training an executioner visiting upon 
us the wrath of God? Nay, it is rather a cleans- 
ing angel pouring forth upon us the love of God. 
The furnace, the suffering, the agony of child- 
training, what do they m.ean ? God is looking for 
a face! It is the face of His Son. "For He 



8 LIFE TALKS. 

hath fore-ordained us to be conformed to the 
image of His Son. And He is purging from us 
in child-training all that dims that image. There- 
fore, child of God, do not be associating chasten- 
ing only with the word "chastise." Couple it 
also with that beautiful word "chastity," the jew- 
el of perfect, spotless purity of heart and life. 
Thus "chasten" is to ''chaste-en." It is to make 
chaste, to make pure, spiritually. To purge, to 
cleanse, to purify— ^that is God's great purpose in 
all His "child-training." 

Like all true parents, therefore, God has a 
model, a pattern to which He is fashioning the 
lives of His children. That pattern is Jesus 
Christ. And God's great purpose is that Christ 
should be "formed in us." Thus the will of the 
Father is perfect. But the will of the child must 
be plastic. For how can the will of the Father 
be carried out unless the will of the child be 
yielded? Otherwise may not the child baffle at 
every step the highest purpose of the Father for 
the life of the child? You can Jo anything with 
an obedient child. You can do nothing with a 
disobedient one. Wherefore the first great lesson 
God is seeking to teach in chastening is — 

OBFDiENCIv. 

"Though He were a Son yet learned He obedi- 
ence through the things zvhich He suffered" is 
the wondrous word spoken of the Lord Himself 



CHASTENING. 9 

And have you not noted how true this is in the 
lives of all God's children? The chamber of suf- 
fering — is it not the birth-place of obedience? 
Is not the crowning grace of utter submission to 
His will wTOUght out in the place of affliction as 
nowhere else ? Go sometimes into such a chamber 
of suffering. There lies one of God's "shut-ins." 
For years she has been in the fiery furnace of 
affliction. By and by you express the hope that 
this affliction may pass away. A smile flits over 
the wan face. Quickly from the trembling lips 
drops this sentence: '*If it be God's will." — Not 
her own will, but God's! That is the first 
thought. The words, the spirit, the life of the 
sufferer all image forth one great truth — abso- 
lute submission to the will of God. Somehow — 
we know not how — but, somehow, this spirit of 
obedience, of perfect submission to the will of 
God is wrought out in the furnace and the cru- 
cible as in no other experience of life. How 
many of us strong-willed men and women have 
found that to be true ! 

We recall a striking story from the lips of a 
friend. A lady was summering in Switzerland. 
One day she started out for a stroll. Presently, 
as she climbed the mountain-side, she came to a 
shepherd's fold. She walked to the door and 
looked in. There sat the shepherd. Around him 
lay his flock. Near at hand, on a pile of straw, 
bv a single sheep. It seemed to be in suffering. 
Scanning it closely, the lady saw that its leg was 



10 LIFE TALKS. 

broken. At once her sympathy went out to the 
suffering sheep. She looked up inquiringly to 
the shepherd. ''How did it happen?" she said. 
To her amazement, the shepherd answered : ''Ma- 
dam, I broke that sheep's leg." A look of pain 
swept over the visitor's face. Seeing it, the 
shepherd went on: "Madam, of all the sheep in 
my flock, this one was the most wayward. It 
never would obey my voice. It never would fol- 
low in the pathway in which I was leading the 
flock. It wandered to the verge of many a peril- 
ous cliff and dizzy abyss. And not only was it 
disobedient itself, but it was ever leading the 
other sheep of my flock astray. I had before 
bad experience with sheep of this kind. So I 
broke its leg. The first day I went to it with 
food, it tried to bite me. I let it lie alone for a 
couple of days. Then, I went back to it. And 
now, it not only took the food, but licked my 
hand, and showed every sign of submission and 
even affection. And now let me tell you som.e- 
thing. When this sheep is well, as it soon will 
be, it will be the model sheep of my flock. No 
sheep will hear my voice so quickly. None will 
follow so closely at my side. Instead of leading 
its m.ates astray, it will now be an example and 
a guide for the wavward ones, leading them, with 
itself, in the path of obedience to my call. In 
short, a complete transformation will have come 
into the life of this wayward sheep. It has 
learned obedience through its suffering." 



CHASTENING. u 

Friend, from the suiTering of baffled plans 
which have brought you the keenest disappoint- 
ment of Hfe: fromx the suffering of personal be- 
reavements which have torn from your presence 
loved ones unspeakably precious to your soul; 
from the suffering of temporal losses and broken 
fortunes; from the suffering which has stalked 
into your life through the wilfullness and sin of 
others ; from the suffering which seemed at times 
to bring you to the brink of a broken faith and a 
broken heart; yea, suffering one, out of your 
very agony of heart and soul, somehow, oh, some- 
how, the eternal God of love and mercy is seek- 
ing to bring into your life the supremest blessing 
that can enrich and glorify that life — the blessing 
of a human will yielded to the will of God. 

And to be yielded to the will of God — what a 
place is that for you ! It means more than sil- 
ver and gold ; more than gratified desires and am- 
bitions; more than all the sweet blandishments 
of friendship ; more than all the praises of men ; 
more than all the prizes of fame ; yea, more than 
the attainment of all your highest earthly aims 
and strivings is this richest and deepest of all 
blessings, to be hidden, sunken, swallowed up in 
the will of God for all time and amid all circum- 
stances. And it is this that God is seeking to 
teach you through chastening. It is into this 
hiding place of peace and power from which the 
world can never dislodge you, that God is striv- 
ing to bring you by the way of tribulation, disap- 



12 UFB TALKS. 

pointment and pain. All that brings you there 
is worth its costliest price of blood and suffering. 
Rather than the life out of His will nothing can 
be too dear-bought that brings us into that will. 
Rather than miss it, we can spare nothing from 
our lives that will compass it. 

And, now, as God brings us into this place of 
obedience, He is able to work out in us the next 
rich out-come of His child-training, and that is : 

* * * * 

Fruitage. 

''Afterzmrd it yieldeth . . . :^ruit.'' (v. ii.) 

The summei showers are falling. The poet 
stands by the window watching them. They are 
beating and buffeting the earth with their fierce 
down-pour. But the poet sees in his imaginings 
more than the showers which are falling before 
his eyes. He sees myriads of lovely flowers 
which shall soon be breaking forth from the 
watered earth, filling it with matchless beauty 
and fragrance. And so he sings: 

"It isn't raining rain for me, it's raining daffodils; 

In every dimpling drop I see wild flowers upon the 

hills. 
A cloud of gray engulfs the day, and overwhelms the 

town; 
It isn't raining rain for me: ifs raining roses down." 

Perchance some one of God's chastened chil- 
dren is even now saying: "O God, it is raining 



CHASTENING. 13 

hard for me to-night. Testings are raining upon 
me which seem beyond my power to endure. 
Disappointments are raining fast, to the utter de- 
feat of all my chosen plans. Bereavements are 
raining into my life which are making my shrink- 
ing heart quiver in its intensity of suffering. The 
rain of affliction is surely beating down upon my 
soul these days." Withal, friend, 5^ou are mis- 
taken. It isn't raining rain for you. It's rain- 
ing blessing. For, if you will but believe your 
Father's word, under that beating rain are spring- 
ing up spiritual flowers of such fragrance and 
beauty as never before grew in that stormless, 
un-chastened life of yours. You indeed see the 
rain. But, do you see, also, the flowers? You 
are pained by the testings. But God sees the 
sweet flower of faith which is up-springing in 
your life under those very trials. You shrink 
from the suffering. But God sees the tender 
compassion for other sufferers which is finding 
birth in your soul. You see the disappointments, 
but God sees the sweet submission to His divine 
and perfect will which is growing out of the very 
same. Your heart winces under the sore be- 
reavement. But God sees the deepening and en- 
riching which that sorrow has brought to you. 
It isn't raining afflictions for you. It is raining 
tenderness, love, compassion, patience and a 
thousand other flowers and fruits of the blessed 
Spirit which are bringing into your life such a 
spiritual enrichment as all the fulness of worldly 



14 LIFB TALKS. 

prosperity and ease was never able to beget in 
your innermost soul. 

And are you saying: "But, what a fruitless 
branch I must be that God must needs so to 
purge me?" Nay, not so. Have you not no- 
ticed what kind of branches it is that God 
purges? Hear His word: ''Every branch that 
beareth fruit, He purgeth if (Jno. 15 : 2). It is 
not the fruitless but the fruitful branch which 
is purged. And why ? "That it may bring forth 
more fruit." Purging is, therefore, not the proof 
of worthlessness, but the proof of fruit. For it 
is only the fruit bearers that are purged. The 
others are "taken away." Wherefore His purg- 
ing is both the proof that there is fruit, and the 
pledge that there shall be more. 

* * * * 
God does not expect us to enjoy chastening, hut 
to E^NDURK it for the sake of its aft- 
erward, (v. II.) 

Sometimes we reproach ourselves because we 
are not enjoying affliction. We ought to be like 
Paul, who, we say, "rejoiced in tribulation." But 
do we think by this that Paul really enjoyed 
tribulation? Surely not. When they knouted 
his naked back with the iron points of the leather- 
thonged scourge, think you he enjoyed it? The 
stones they hurled at him were no sweet-meat 
missies tossed by sportive hands in friendly car- 
nival. They were business-like, merciless, jag- 



CHASTENING. 15 

ged, and went home to their target with blows 
that crashed him into bloody insensibility. Think 
you he enjoyed that? The ''perils by false breth- 
ren" too — do you know what that is? — To have 
a friend play you false — one whom you had 
taken to your heart of hearts, one whom you 
leaned upon, and to whom you poured out your 
soul, what is that but the stiletto-stab that makes 
the blood spurt from every vein in your inner- 
most being? Did you enjoy that? Surely not. 
Well, neither did Paul. Neither does any man 
with flesh, and blood, and nerves, and heart. But 
what did this old hero of Jesus Christ's kingdom 
say about the affliction? Listen, "I rejoice in 
tribulation, for tribulation worketh/' etc. He re- 
joiced not in tribulation, itself, but amid tribula- 
tion for the things that came forth from it. 
Likewise, God, our Father does not expect us to 
enjoy child-training. He is not displeased if we 
find it hard to bear, and shrink under it. Nay, 
He distinctly says, "it is grievous," and he only 
asks us to endure it, not for itself, but for the 
glorious "afterward" which is to come forth from 
it. 

There are three warnings we need amid child- 
training. In verse five, God admonishes us to : — 

^ ^ ^ 3fC 

"Despise Not." 

Do not "esteem lightly" God's child-training. 
Do not look down upon it. Above all, do not let 



i6 LIFE TALKS. 

your heart grow hard and bitter against God 
because of it. Very needful is this warning to 
all of us. How many have lost fellowship with 
God, and have drifted into the dark places of 
doubt, rebelHousness, and despair because they 
have suffered their hearts to be embittered against 
God for his seemingly strange dealings with them ! 
Ah! friend, shun that above everything else. 
''Harden not your heart." Do not rise up in 
mutiny of spirit against God. When you let that 
serpent coil in your heart, it will sting your inner- 
most soul to the death of peace, and rest, and joy 
in your Lord. Guard yourself against that. 
Again in the same verse, comes the warning : — 

''Paint Notr 

How great is the temptation at this point ! How 
the soul sinks, the heart grows sick, and the faith 
staggers under the keen trials and testings which 
come into our lives in times of special bereave- 
ment and suffering. "I cannot bear up any 
longer; I am fainting under this providence. 
What shall I do? God tells me not to faint. 
But what can one do when he is fainting?" What 
do you do when you are about to faint physical- 
ly? You cannot do anything. You cease from 
your own doing. In your faintness, you fall upon 
the shoulder of some strong loved one. You lean 
hard. You rest. You lie still and trust, until 
your fainting soul comes back to its own. It is 



CHASTENING. 17 

so when we are tempted to faint under afflic- 
tion. God's message to us is not "Be strong, and 
of good courage," for he knows our strength and 
courage have fled away. But it is that sweet 
word : "Be still, and know that I am God." Hud- 
son Taylor was so feeble in the closing months of 
his life, that he wrote a dear friend, "I am so 
weak I cannot work; I cannot read my Bible; I 
cannot even pray. I can only lie still in God's 
arms like a little child, and trust." This won- 
drous man of God with all his spiritual power 
came to a place of physical suffering and weak- 
ness where he could only lie still and trust. And 
that is all God asks of you. His dear child, when 
you grow faint in the fierce fires of affliction. Do 
not try to he strong. Just he still, and know that 
He is God and will sustain you, and bring you 
through. 

There is another warning we need in chasten- 
ing, and it is this : — 

* * * * 
Question Not. 

There are some questions the believer may ask 
of his God. We may say "what" to God. For 
that is the question of service. "Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do?" It is fair for us to ask 
that, for we have a right to know the particular 
ministry He has for us from day to day, even as 
had Paul. Again, we may say "where" to God. 
For that is the question of guidance. It is but 



i8 LIFE TALKS. ' 

right that we should know the place of our serv- 
ice; where He would have us walk, as we move 
on in our daily journey with our Lord. Then, 
too, we may say "when" to Him. For that is 
the question of time. And it is well to know 
His time for all things, that w^e neither run be- 
fore Him in our zeal, nor lag behind Him in our 
slothfulness. But there is one question no child 
of His should ever put to God concerning God's 
dealings with him 'in chastening. No man should 
ever say ''why" to God. For "why" is the ques- 
tion of doubt. It is the assassin of faith. It 
leads us to the brink of a dizzy cliff — the preci- 
pice of rebellion against God. No Christian can 
afford to say it. Our Lord never uttered it save 
once, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsak- 
en me?" That awful "Why"! It had all His 
life been a stranger to His lips. And why had 
it fallen now? Because of sin — not His, for He 
had none. But yours and mine, and the world's, 
w^hich plunged Him, our sin-bearer, into the 
black despair of the only hour of separation from 
God He had ever known in all His eternal ex- 
istence. And you and I are coming close to sin, 
with its darkness, and broken fellowship, and its 
rebellion against God when we began to say 
"why" to Him. You do not like your little one 
to say "why" to you, do you? Its mistrust 
wounds your father-soul. Neither would God 
have you say it to Him, for it brings like" grief 
to his father-heart. 



CHASTBNING. I9 

There are some other things for us to remem- 
ber too in chastening. The first is: — 



Remember the love of God. 

Last year there was found in an African mine 
the most magnificent diamond in the world's his- 
tory. It was presented to the king of England 
to blaze in his crown of state. The king sent it 
to Amsterdam to be cut. It was put in the hands 
of an expert lapidary. And what do you sup- 
pose he did with it? He took this gem of price- 
less value. He cut a notch in it. Then he struck 
it a hard blow with his instrument, and lo! the 
superb jewel lay in his hand, cleft in twain. 
What recklessness ! what wastefulness ! what 
criminal carelessness! Not so. For days and 
weeks that blow had been studied and planned. 
Drawings and models had been made of the gem. 
Its quality, its defects, its lines of cleavage had 
all been studied with minutest care. The man 
to whom it was committed was one of the most 
skilful lapidaries in the world. Do you say that 
blow was a mistake? Nay. It was the climax 
of the lapidary's skill. When he struck that blow, 
he did the one thing which would bring that gem 
to its most perfect shapeliness, radiance, and jew- 
elled splendor. That blow which seemed to ruin 
the superb precious stone was in fact its perfect 
redemption. For from these two halves were 
wrought the two magnificent gems which the 



20 LIFE TALKS. 

skilled eye of the lapidary saw hidden in the 
rough, un-cut stone as it came from the mines. 

So, sometimes, God lets a stinging blow fall 
upon your life. The blood spurts. The nerves 
wince. The soul cries out in an agony of won- 
dering protest. The blow seems to you an ap- 
palling mistake. But it is not, for you are the 
m.ost priceless jewel in the world to God. And 
He is the most skilled lapidary in the universe. 
Some day you are to blaze in the diadem of the 
King. As you lie in his hand now He knozus 
just how to deal with you. Not a blow will be 
permitted to fall upon your shrinking soul but 
that the love of God permits it, and works out 
from it depths of blessing and spiritual enrich- 
ment unseen, and unthought-of by you. 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

Remember the :?athkrhood of God 

A visitor at a school for the deaf and dumb 
was writing questions on the blackboard for the 
children. By and by he wrote this sentence, 
"Why has God made me to hear and speak, and 
m.ade you deaf and dumb?" The awful sen- 
tence fell upon the little ones like a fierce blow 
in the face. They sat palsied before that dread- 
ful "why." And then a little girl arose. Her 
lip was trembling. Her e3^es were swimming 
with tears. Straight to the board she walked, 
and, picking up the crayon wrote with firm 
hand these precious words: — 



CHASTBXIKG. 21 

"Bren so Father for so it seemed good in 
Thy si gilt!" What a reply! It reaches up and 
lays hold of an eternal truth upon which the 
maturest believer as well as the youngest child 
of God may alike unshakeably rest — the truth 
that God is your Father. Do you mean that? 
Do you really and fully believe that? When 
you do, then your dove of faith will no longer 
wander in weary unrest, but will settle down 
forever in its eternal resting place of peace. 
''Your Father r Vv'hy that takes in everything! 
Because He is your Father, how could He fail, 
or forget you ? Look into your own father heart 
and mark the strength, the tenderness, the un- 
speakableness of your love for that winsom.e lit- 
tle one enshrined in your heart of hearts. Then 
say to yourself, ''God's Father love for me in- 
finitely surpasses all this." Your Father ! Against 
that all doubts must at last dash themselves to 
pieces as the sea-sprav beats itself to nothingness 
upon a rock-bound coast. Down upon that your 
child-trained soul will find a final resting place 
in untrem.bling trustfulness. Rear t^at up be-!^ore 
the devil's subtle, hideous, hissing ''whv" and he 
will stagP'er back, the unmasked, baffled, beaten 
traitor that in truth he is. 



Give God a Chance. 



"Prove me now" — Mai. 3 : 10. 

In a great city telegraph office scores of instru- 
ments were busily clicking away. Presently, in 
the midst of the din and clatter, the door opened, 
and in walked a young man — a stranger. He was 
tall, and rather awkward, with a linen duster 
reaching nearly to his heels. In response to his 
request for employment the chief operator mo- 
tioned him to a chair. By and by another instru- 
ment began to click. The most important w^ork 
of the day was on hand. The press dispatches 
were ready, at the distant city. And by his table 
in that city sat one of the swiftest writers, and 
most skilful operators in the service, waiting to 
began his rapid sending. The chief motioned to 
the tall young man to take his seat at the table at 
which the press news was to be received. He 
quietly did so. The other workers lifted their 
heads from their instruments, to look askance at 
the rustic stranger in his attempt to "take" the 
fastest man on the line. They were watching for 
him to fail. But he had no notion of doing so. 
Answering the call, he took up his pen and began 
to write. And there for hour after hour he sat. 
22 



GIVE GOD A CHANCE. 23 

Without a break, without a halt; writing a hand 
Hke a copper-plate in its clearness and beauty, he 
tossed off sheet after sheet of copy to the waiting 
messenger boy, while all the office stared in as- 
tonished admiration. When the work was fin- 
ished, the position was his without any further 
question. When asked his name, he replied — 
Edison. It was the beginning of his world-wide 
fame. All he wanted was — a chance. And when 
he got it he did marvels. 

And is not this the homely expression of the 
real thought in the verse from Malachi, cited 
above. ''Bring ye all the tithes. . .Prove Me now 
,..if I will not open the windows of heaven." 
What is God saying here but this ? "My child, I 
still have windows in heaven. They are yet in 
service. The bolts slide as easily as of old. The 
hinges have not grown rusty. I would rather 
fling them open, and pour forth, than keep them 
shut and hold back. I opened them for Moses, 
and the sea parted. I opened them for Joshua, — 
and Jordan rolled back. I opened them for Gid- 
eon, and the hosts fled. I will open them for 
you, — if you will only, let me. On this side of the 
windows heaven is the same rich store-house as 
of old. The fountains and streams still overflow. 
The treasure rooms are still bursting with gifts. 
The lack is not on My side. It is on yours. / 
am waiting. / am ready. Prove Me now. Ful- 
fill the conditions, on your part. Bring in the 
tithes. Give Me a chance. 



a4 LIPB TALKS. 

And first, then, let us 

Give God a chance, — hy trusting. 

Faith opens the soul to God. It is the channel 
down which God's heavenly blessings flow to 
usward. It is the bridge which leaps the chasm 
between heaven and earth. It is the ladder over 
which God's messengers of help journey to us 
needy earthlings. ' It is Faith which gives God a 
chance to work in your life and soul. Turning 
away from God in un- faith is putting a plate- 
glass between you and an electric current; it 
shuts off the flow of life. It is stopping your ears 
with cotton, so that no note of a song can float in 
upon your soul. It is wearing a bandage over 
your eyes, so that no glint of the beauty of dawn 
or sunset can com.e to your blinded vision. The 
life, the light, the song are there. But you shut 
them out. You give them no chance. 

A simple picture illustration comes to mind 
here. It is that of a human hand. In the hand 
is an empty bottle. The bottle is under a foun- 
tain. The waters are flowing atop, at the sides, 
all over the bottle. But there is not a drop inside. 
Underneath is the legend : "Why is the bottle not 
filled?" The reason is simple. There is a cork 
in the bottle. It has no chance. Even so Faith 
is the soul's in-take. Through it God's life comes 
in. Love is the soul's outlet. Through it God's 



GIVE GOD A CHANCE. 25 

life pours forth. To clog either is to stay the 
flow of life. You give God no chance. 

Unsaved friend, why do you continue to live in 
the shadow of death? Why has not the miracle 
of the new birth been wrought in your soul ? Why 
do you, every moment, stand in jeopardy of a 
catastrophe which all the years of eternity can 
never set right? Simply because you will not 
fulfill God's simple conditions. You zuill not ac- 
cept and trust Jesus Christ as the Saviour of your 
soul. You will not give God a chance. Suppose 
the delicate mechanism of your gold watch has a 
breakage. You take it to the watchmaker and 
ask if he can repair it. He says he can, if you 
v/ill but leave it in his hands for a few days. At 
once you trust him with it. For you know he 
can do nothing unless you give him a chance. Or 
you want your portrait painted. You go to an 
artist friend. He tells you he will do it. But he 
says you must come daily to him, for so many sit- 
tings. You straightway obey. For you know 
he cannot paint your portrait unless you give him 
a chance. Or you go to a dock, and ask the cap- 
tain of a steamship if he will land you on the 
other side of the ocean. He says he will, if you 
will buy a ticket, step aboard the boat, and trust 
him to carry you over. This too you do. For you 
know you can never cross the ocean unless you 
trust yourself to the ship. You must needs give 
it a chance. How strange then, that you will not 
jive God the same chance in eternal matters which 



26 LIFE TALKS. 

you give to men in temporal ones ! There is a 
breach in your soul of vastly more moment than 
the breakage in your watch. God will mend it — 
if you give Him a chance. There is a picture — 
the image of Jesus Christ — to be painted upon 
your inner being, — as upon every other life that 
would enter heaven. God will paint it — if you 
give him a chance. There is a journey out into 
the unknown abyss of eternity, which no man can 
ever take to save by God's way, and God's guid- 
ance. God will pilot you all the way — if you give 
Him a chance. Be as fair to God in matters of 
eternity, as 3"0u are to men in the concerns of 
time. Fulfil His simple conditions of salvation. 
Give yourself to Him. Trust Him, in Christ. He 
will surely save your soul — if you only give Him 
a chance. 



Give God a chance, — hy praying. 

There are many things too difficult for j^ou to 
do. But you do not hesitate to seek some one 
more skilful and give him a chance to do for you. 
You have a precious gem to re-set. You cannot 
do it. But you are quick to give the expert jew- 
eler a chance to do it for you. There is a danger- 
ous mountain steep to climb. You do not know 
how to find the pathway. But you give the moun- 
tain guide a chance to lead you in it. There is a 
deep ford to cross. You cannot risk it. But you 



GIVE GOD A CHANCE. 27 

give the hardy ferryman a chance to pilot you 
across it. 

It is not otherwise with you and God. There 
are many things you cannot do. But God says: 
"If ye ask I will do." There are burdens you 
cannot bear. Give God a chance through prayer, 
and He will bear them for you. There are prob- 
lems too knotty for your solution. Give God 9 
chance by prayer, and God will solve them for 
you. There are barriers too high for you to over- 
leap. Ask God. They are not too high for Him. 
Somehow when there seems no other chance for 
us, prayer gives God a chance. And behold He 
does for us what we had forever despaired of 
doing ourselves. 

A Christian business friend was in sore straits. 
A sudden demand had been made upon him for 
a large sum of money. Every consideration of 
business honor demanded its payment. Yet he 
was helpless to meet it. The only possible way 
out of the crisis seemed to be the sale of a piece 
of real estate. But the market was discouragingly 
dull. There was scarcely a buyer in it. In short 
there was no human chance of selling it. So we 
determined to give God a chance. Spreading the 
whole matter before Him, we began to pray. 
After two weeks of earnest supplication a man 
came to ask our friend if his real estate was in 
the market. In another week he came again and 
asked the price. A little later he made our friend 
an offer. The latter, however, deemed it too low. 



2S LIFE TALKS. 

So we prayed on, that God might work His per- 
fect will in it all. At the end of six weeks of 
prayer the sale was made, and our friend came to 
us with a check for many thousands of dollars in 
his hand. With tears in his eyes, he said: "It 
seems to have come as directly from God as 
though He Himself had handed it to me over the 
counter of the bank." That was true. It was all 
of God. We had simply given Him a chance. 

^ jjj ;>; :J« 

It takes God Timk to answer prayer; give Him a 
chance. 

We often fail to give God a chance in this re- 
spect. It takes time for God to paint a rose. It 
takes time for God to grow^ an oak. It takes time 
for God to make bread from a wheat field. He 
takes the earth. He pulverizes. He softens. He 
enriches. He wets with showers and dews. He 
warms with life. He gives the blade, the stock, 
the amber grain, and then at last the bread for 
the hungry. All this takes time. Therefore we 
sow, and till, and wait, and trust, until all God's 
purpose has been wrought out. We give God a 
chance in this matter of time. We need to learn 
this same lesson in our prayer life. It takes God 
time to answer prayer. 

A Christian worker had reached the end of the 
week, well wearied with service. The sunshine 
and rippling river were luring him to an hour's 
rowing. Boarding a passing car he was soon 



GIVE GOD A CHANCE. 29 

on the way to the river bank. As he neared it he 
remembered that it was iate in the season, and 
there was a UkeUhood of the boat-house being 
closed. But the outing for tired nerves and 
weary body seemed a clear need. So he hfted 
his heart quietly in prayer that if it were the 
Lord's will He might send along the caretaker of 
the boat-house to furnish the boat. Reaching the 
spot he found to his disappointment that the house 
was closed. Turning to leave under the impulse 
of the moment, the thought flashed in "It has only 
been a moment or two since you prayed the Lord 
to send along the boatman, and now you are go- 
ing away without even waiting long enough for 
him to get here. Why don't you give God a 
chance." So he sat down by the river bank to 
wait. In ten minutes the boat-keeper c9-me stroll- 
ing along. The house was opened, the boat se- 
cured, and the refreshing hour's outing enjoyed 
to the full. VN^ith it came another simple lesson 
in the prayer-life, that it takes God time to answer 
prayer, and that we therefore need to give God 
a chance. 

Take this matter of conversion. You have an 
unsaved loved one. You have prayed for him — 
for months — for years. He is still outside the 
kingdom. God has not answered your prayer, 
you say. But perhaps you are at sea in your view 
of conversion. Does God bring a soul into His 
kingdom as you might lift a child over a hedge, or 
hurl a stone across a stream ? Does man's choice 



30 LIFE TALKS. 

have no place in this ? It surely does. It matters 
not by what theological side-path you approach 
this matter of conversion. One thing is certain, 
however God may move upon man's will He does 
not supplant that will. Whatever may be the mys- 
tery of God's choice, no soul ever comes into the 
kingdom without his own choice. 

Hence concerning the conversion of a resisting 
soul remember th-is. God is striving with a human 
zmlL But do you know what it is to move upon 
a human will? This very loved one you have 
warned. With him you have pleaded. With him 
you have reasoned. Yet all these years that 
strong will has stood out against you. Now, at 
the last, you have given up in sheer despair the 
attempt to m_ove upon a human will. Do you not 
realize then what it means for God to do it? God 
may have heart-idols to overthrow. God may 
have to foil chosen plans. God may suffer afflic- 
tions to come. God must press in upon the man 
engrossed in the temporal, a growing vision of 
the eternal. God must needs cherish, woo, dis- 
appoint, upHft, bereave, enrich, impoverish, — yea, 
bring to bear a multitude of influences upon a re- 
sisting will, ere it yields to Him. But to unstop 
ears deaf to the voice of God — ^to open eyes blind 
to the vision of God — to turn aside wandering feet 
into the path of God — all this takes time. There- 
fore — Give God a chance. 



GIVE GOD A CHANCE. 31 

Give God a chance, — by yielding. 

God can do nothing zuith us if we do not yield — 
He has no chance. 

We recall a day of sight-seeing in the palaces 
of Genoa. From room to room we had followed 
the care-taker in his tour. Paintings, sculpture, 
curios of all sorts had followed each other in 
rapid train. Finally V\'e entered a room seemingly 
em.pty. Bare walls, floors, and tables alone greet- 
ed us. Presently the guide led us across the 
room to the wall at the farther side. There we 
espied a niche in the wall. It was covered with a 
glass case. Behind the case was a magnificent 
vioHn, in perfect preservation. This, said the 
guide, was Paganini's favorite violin ; the rich old 
Cremona upon which he loved most of all to dis- 
play his marvelous skill. We gazed intently upon 
the superb instrument, with its warm, rich tints, 
sinuous curves, and perfect model. Hstening mean- 
while to the estimate of its almost priceless value. 
And then we tried to imagine the wondrous 
strains the touch of the great master would bring 
forth if he were there in that quiet palace chamber. 
Then came the thought : Nay. But this could not 
be. For it would not matter what rich melodies 
were in the inner soul of the master. It would 
not avail how eager he might be to pour them 
forth in sweetest, tenderest strain through that 
magnificent instrument. He could not possibly do 
so. For it was locked up against him. It was an 



32 LIFE TALKS. 

unyielded instrument. It was like thousands of 
lives which are pad-locked against Ciod, not back 
of a fragile, easily shattered glass case, bnt be- 
hind the impenetrable armor plate of an unyielded 
human will. It gave the Master no cha-ice. 

Friend, is this why your life seems barren and 
fruitless? Is this why God does not seem to be 
using that life? Is it that, however willing. He 
cannot use it because unyielded to Him? For this 
picture of an instrument is no fancy, but the very 
one God employs in His Word. "Present your 
members as instruments to God," He says. And 
how can He use an un-presented instrument? The 
very word "present" pictures the secret of your 
trouble. It means "to place near the hand" of 
one; to set at the hand of another as one might 
set a tool or instrument. To be a surrendered 
man, a yielded man, is simply to be God's handy 
man. The carpenter is at work. Some of his 
tools are hanging on the wall of his workshop. 
Some are right at hand on his work-bench. When 
he wants one quickly and urgently which will he 
use? The one he can reach quickest — the one 
"set at his hand." This is precisely where God 
wants your life. Not hanging on the wall of self- 
ishness, but yielded — reachable — usable. This is 
what gives God a chance. 

Moses, with his hesitation and stammering 
tongue, sesemed but a weak instrument. But he 
gave God a chance. And God made him the law- 
giver and leader of His people. Gideon looked 



GIVE GOD A CHANCE. 33 

with fear and trembling upon the great work be- 
fore him. Yet he gave God a chance. And God 
routed a great and mighty host with his puny- 
lamps and pitcher. David was but a stripling 
shepherd, shut up in obscurity. But he gave God 
a chance. And God brought him to a throne. The 
little lad with the loaves and fishes had but a 
mite. But he gave God a chance. And the Mas- 
ter brake, and brake the morsels until a famish- 
ing multitude was fed before the wondering eyes 
of the grateful boy. The man on the Damascus 
road gave God a chance on that fateful day. And 
God shook the world with him. Seven weary 
fishermen peered through the morning gloaming 
upon the form of one standing upon the shore. 
The night was far spent. The day was at hand. 
The hour for successful fishing was past. But 
when the voice rang out over the waters: "Cast 
the net on the right side of the ship," they yield- 
ed to the Master. And He gave them such a 
catch as they had never known in all their fisher 
days — when they gave Him the chance. 

It is not how much do you have, but how much 
of yours does God have. It is not a question of 
bemoaning what you have not, but of yielding 
what you have. One talent yielded, is worth 
more than ten simply possessed. Is your hand- 
ful of grain in the hands of the sower? That bit 
yielded, is worth more than a bin, boarded. The 
nugget of gold, which has been minted and coin- 
ed, and is purchasing hourly blessing as it passes 



34 LIFE TALKS. 

from hand to hand, is worth all the undug tons 
of treasure which the earth conceals. 

Reader, you have given pleasure a chance. Has 
it paid ? You are giving ambition a chance. Does 
it satisfy? You are giving money-getting a 
chance. Is it for self or God? Have a care. 
When life comes to an end is it going to be 
ashes — emptiness — f ruitlessness ? What a pity! 
Try God. Give Him a chance. What is your 
life, anyhow? Where is it centered? On self or 
God? Is it counting for eternity? Or only for 
time? Sit down a while and think, not only 
about your soul, but your life. Ask yourself not 
necessarily what God's judgment will be, but 
what your own honest verdict upon your life will 
be if it goes on to the finish exactly as it is now. 
Any Christian man who w411 do that honestly will 
begin to live for God. He will see that an im- 
mortal life which does not take into account God's 
eternal plan for it, must be a failure. 

Friend, when you come to the end where the 
world w411 have shriveled to its true littleness, 
and eternity loomed up to its real bigness ; when 
the things which are seen are really found to be 
temporal and the things which are unseen, eter- 
nal ; when you are on the brink of stepping over 
into the glory where God is all and in all ; then 
you will be glad, oh, so glad, that to-day. when 
you finished this message, you laid it down and 
decided that as for you and your life, from this 
time forth you would 

Give — God — a — chart ce. 



The Blood-Covenant. 



John 15: 13-15.— "'Greater love hath no man than 
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye 
are My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. 
Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant 
knoweth not what his lord doeth but I have called you 
friends ; for all things that I have heard of My Father, 
I have made known unto you." 

"And Abraham was called ihe Friend of God." — 
James 2:23. 

In the days of Abraham, the relation of friend- 
ship was entered into by a rite which was pecu- 
liar and significant. Two men, desiring to come 
into the place of friendship with each other, con- 
stituted that friendship by this rite, which was 
known as "'The Blood-Covenant." The parties 
came together with a common cup. Each man 
pricked his arm with a sharp instrument, and 
allowed a few drops of blood to flow into the 
cup. Sometimes this commingled blood was also 
mixed with water. Then each man drank from 
the cup which contained the blood of each. When 
they had so drunk, they were constituted friends 
by this custom of their tribe. From this rite of 
friendship sprang some beautiful and interesting 
truths we desire to bring before you at this time 
35 



36 LIPB TALKS. 

in our study of the Word of God. The first one 
is this : — 

^ :^ ^ ;(c 

Bach man i^aid down his own life for the other. 

As he cut the arm and allowed the blood to 
trickle into the cup, he allowed his own Hfe to 
flow forth. For "the blood is the Hfe." And 
each man, in type, by that rite laid down his own 
life on behalf of the other. "Now, Abraham 
was called the friend of God." And we are told 
in one place that, in entering into covenant rela- 
tion with God, Abraham "cut" a covenant with 
God, as though in relation to this interesting rite 
among the tribes. Abraham was then called "The 
friend of God." 

The time came when God called upon Abra- 
ham to stand the supreme test of friendship: — 
to pour out his own life, if need be, for his blood- 
covenant Friend, the God of Heaven. "Abra- 
ham, take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac, 
whom thou lovest, and offer him for a burnt-of- 
fering." That was the supreme test. Abraham 
was to give up his own life — yea, more than his 
own life — for doubtless he would far rather have 
laid down his own Hfe than the Hfe of Isaac. 
You know the story. You recall the picture of 
the father, with breaking heart, and the bright- 
faced lad, going up the mountain path together: 
— the angel of God staying the hand of the fa- 
ther, and the marvellous grace and compassion of 



THE BLOOD-COVBNANT. Z7 

God which spared Abraham's only son. But the 
time came when Abraham's seed needed some one 
to die for them; to show His love for them even 
unto death. And though He spared Abraham's 
son, yet ''God spared not His own Son, but freely 
gave Him up for us all." Ah ! how Jesus Christ, 
our blood-covenant Friend, kept that blood-cov- 
enant for you and me ! How He poured out His 
life in suffering, even unto death! They ar- 
raigned Him; they tried Him; they bore false 
witness against Him ; they smote Him in the face ; 
they scourged Him; they spat upon Him; they 
mock-worshiped Him; they crucified Him; they 
jeered at Him ; they wagged their heads at Him ; 
they railed on Him; — but nothing could shake 
His purpose to pour out His own life for us, His 
blood-oovenant friends. We sing, "What a 
Friend we have in Jesus." We sang it a mo- 
ment ago, and who could doubt it? No friend — 
no one bound to us by the tenderest and most sa- 
cred ties of this world's relationships, has ever 
stood the test of friendship as Jesus Christ did 
in the laying down of His life for us. But, dear 
friends, can we take the other side of the truth 
and say "Has Jesus Christ a friend in me? Have 
I laid down my life at His feet?" Turn some- 
time to 2 Cor. 5: 15, and there note the three- 
fold purpose of His death. "He died for all, 
that they which live should no longer live unto 
themselves, but unto Him who died for them." 
''He died" — for us. "He died" that we might 



38 LIFE TALKS. 

live. "He died" that we who Hve — should no 
longer live unto ourselves. Ahl we have met the 
purpose of Christ's death for us as sinners. We 
have accepted it. We have beHeved and have 
been brought from eternal death to eternal Hfe, 
But is it possible that any of us are baffling the 
third great purpose of Jesus Christ's death — ^the 
purpose that the believer, who has been delivered 
from the guilt of sin, and unto eternal life, should 
give his life to his blood-covenanted Friend ! 

Do I love the Lord Jesus Christ? That is a 
real personal question. How may I know that I 
love Him ? "Greater love hath no man than this, 
that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
Ah ! I may speak with the tongue of men and of 
angels, and yet I may not love my Lord. I may 
have all wisdom and all knowledge, and have the 
faith that moves mountains, and yet I may not 
love my Lord. I may give my body to be burned, 
and yet I may not love my Lord, supremely. But 
there is one thing He says I may do which is the 
supreme test of love to Him: — "Greater love 
hath no man than this, that a man lay down his 
life" for Jesus Christ. We cannot lay it down 
in atonement as He did. But we can lay it down 
as a blessed, precious living sacrifice at His feet, 
and thus be His friend. Again : — 



THE BLOOD-COVUNANT. 39 

Bach man rkce:ived the i^n^E of the other. 

When each man took that cup, and drank of 
the blood his friend had allowed to drip into it, he 
received the life of his friend in type. For the 
blood is the life. And as he drank the blood he 
drank the life. "This cup is the new covenant 
in My blood : drink ye all of it." I wonder if His 
mind did not go back to that beautiful picture of 
hundreds of years before, and if He did not mean 
to make use of that to make so vivid the great 
truth that he had poured out His blood in that 
cup for them to drink, in type. I say, each man 
received the life of the other. "Oh! but," you 
say, "how could this be true of Jesus, our blood- 
covenant Friend?" Listen: — "He took not on 
Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abra- 
ham," His blood-covenant friend. He took our 
human nature, did He not ? He might have been 
a mighty angel. He might have gone back and 
forth between heaven and earth, making occa- 
sional visits to this sin-stained, dying world, in 
all the radiance of His angelic presence. But, 
oh! there was more in His divine heart of love 
than that for us. He took not the nature of an- 
gels, but the seed of Abraham. He became a 
man that He might suffer with us; — that He 
might be "a High Priest that could be touched 
with the feeling of our infirmities;" that He 
might be "tempted even as we are, yet apart from 
sin ;" that He might enter into every condition of 



40 LIFE TALKS. 

our human life; — that He might be a God who 
would actually partake of our human nature and 
drink of our own human cup of sorrow, trial, 
testing, weariness, and weeping. Yet He did even 
more than that. Not only did He take our life, as 
it were, hut we have received His life! He took 
our human nature up to God ; He brought God's 
divine nature down to us. He, who was the Son 
of God, became a man. We who are men be- 
come, by faith in Him, the sons of God. How 
wonderful is this trtsth ! And how God seems to 
want to emphasize this, next to the atonement of 
Jesus Christ for sins: — that the life of Christ 
comes into you and into me as we believe in Jesus 
Christ. Turn to Hebrews, chap. 6, verses 13-17. 
"For when God made promise to Abraham, since 
He could swear by none greater, He szvare by 
Himself, saying, 'Surely blessing, I will bless 
thee, and multiplying, I will multiply thee.' And 
thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the 
promise. For men swear by the greater ; and in 
every dispute of theirs, the oath is final for con- 
firmation. Wherein God, being minded to show 
more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise 
the immutability of His counsel, interposed with 
an oath." What wonderful thing is this that God 
condescends to swear shall be given to the heirs 
of promise? God comes down to the sanctions 
which men themselves use, and swears that the 
blessing of Abraham, His blood-covenant friend, 
shall come upon the heirs of promise. "Well," 



THE BLOOD-COVENANT. 41 

we say, ''but that must be some Jewish promise : 
something for the natural seed of Abraham." 
But now turn to Galatians (3: 14), and see how 
wondrously God himself puts his finger upon 
this promise, that we might never err or mis- 
take its nature. He swears that the blessing of 
Abraham shall come upon the heirs of the prom- 
ise. 

And w^ho are these heirs? And what is this 
promise? Let us read — "That upon the Gentiles 
might come the blessing of Abraham in Christ 
Jesus; that we might receive the promise of the 
Spirit through faith." 

"The promise of the Spirit:" — that was the 
blessing, that which was to come on the Gentiles ; 
the Spirit of God ; the very life of God which was 
to be received through Jesus Christ when men 
believed in Him. The instant the Gospel is 
preached at the formation of the young church, 
and men begin to cry out — "IMen and brethren, 
what shall we do ?" the answer comes as we have 
it in Acts 2 : 38. What God swore to happens. 
"Repent and be baptized into the Lord Jesus 
Christ and ye shall receive the Holy Ghost." 
How plain! — that the instant we believe in him, 
the very life of God himself comes into you and 
me ! I have no theory concerning the Holy Spirit. 
I have no controversy with you concerning His 
indwelling. But I do say that God swears that 
every child of His that believes in the Lord Jesus 
Christ shall receive the Spirit of God. Can we 



42 LIFE TALKS. 

ever doubt that to which God has sworn? If we 
are His children, let us believe that the life of 
God has as really come into us as the flesh and 
blood life of our father and mother, which runs 
in our veins. He Himself says, "This cup is the 
new covenant in My blood" — the covenant of 
grace — the promise of the Spirit- — the promise of 
the life of God in us, to enable us to keep and do 
the will of God as we never could under the law. 
When we drink that cup, then let us remember 
that as surely as the glow, and the warmth, and 
the life of that wine is present in our bodies, so 
surely is the spiritual life of Jesus Christ dwell- 
ing within us. God, with the whole universe from 
which to choose a dwelling-place for Himself and 
for His life, chose your body and mine ! We have 
received the life of Christ. Again : — 



Bach man was filIvE:d with lovi: for the other. 

When these friends drank of that blood of the 
covenant, their hearts clave one to another, as 
did the hearts of Jonathan and David ; and from 
that time they loved one another as none others 
loved in all that, tribe. And as we think of our 
blood-covenant Friend, what a Lover of our souls 
was He! How tender was His love. We see 
Him giving over His mother into the hands of the 
beloved disciples, in the hour of His keenest 
agony. How thoughtful was His love! We see 
Him providing for the hungry and fainting thou- 



THE BLOOD-COVENANT. 43 

sands by preparing the great dinner to meet their 
needs. By the sea-shore in the morning twilight, 
as the wearied apostles come from their night's 
toiling — we see Him making ready the breakfast 
for them: — ^Jesus Christ, the Lord of the uni- 
verse, making breakfast for His own! We see 
the compassion of His love as it went out to the 
waifs and the strays, the sin-stained and suffering. 
We see the unchangeableness of His love, as we 
are told that He loved His own "even unto the 
end:" — unto the end of their coldness; — unto 
the end of betrayal of Him; — unto the end of 
denial of Him; — ^unto the end of all His own 
agony He loved His own. We see this wondrous 
love of Jesus Christ, and we too long to possess it. 
What is the secret of love in our hearts ? Listen : 
— each man received the life of the other. Come 
out with me into the orchard where the fruit- 
trees are. Do you see the patient husbandman at 
work ? He is cultivating the trees ; he is fertiliz- 
ing them; he is pruning out the dead wood and 
superfluous branches. You stand there watching 
him a while, and then you say, "But, my friend, 
what about the fruit? I do not see any signs of 
fruit." And he looks up with a knowing smile — 
does this wise husbandman — and says, "I am 
fertilizing for life; I am tilling for Hfe; I am 
pruning for life; I am cleansing for life. My 
friend," and he smiles again, "when this tree is 
filled with life, I will not have any concern about 
fruit." Assuredly, the secret of fulness of love 



44 LIFE TALKS. 

is simply the secret of fulness of life — the life of 
His Spirit dwelling in us. It is life that brings 
love. — "The fruit of the Spirit is love." Our 
dead, carnal natures do not love as God loves. 
They love the world; they love the ambitions 
of the world; they love the praises, and bau- 
bles, and gewgaws of the world — your carnal 
heart and mine. But the God-life, the Christ- 
life in us, that is love — love of others ; that is the 
love we desire to have; and that is the fruit of 
the Spirit. Wherefore believe in the Spirit's in- 
dwelling ; yield to the Spirit ; trust in the Spirit ; 
do all that will give the Spirit His way in your 
life. And as the power and fulness of the Spirit 
grow in your life, love will grow. 

It is a fruit of the Spirit, we have said. But 
do not forget that it is a fruit. That means, give 
it time. It takes time for the bud to swell; it 
takes time for the blos^m to open ; it takes time 
for the tiny fruit to form ; it takes time for it to 
round out and develop ; it takes time for it to ma- 
ture, until the beautiful blush is on it, and you 
break it open and have the peach in all its ripe- 
ness and lusciousness. It takes time. Be patient 
with yourself as you wait, and trust, and come to 
know more and more of the Spirit of God. Then 
some day you will wake up to realize that there is 
stealing into your heart a glow of love for the 
lost, and love for others, and love for the fallen, 
and love for Christ such as you never knew be- 
fore. God's secret of love is simply His secret 



THE BLOOD-COVENANT. 45 

of life — the Christ life — the Spirit of God within 
us. 

sfs iK :}; Hf 

Bach friend did the: will of the other. 

"Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I com- 
mand you." Each friend stood ready to do that 
which pleased the other friend, even to the laying 
down of his life for that friend. Well, can this 
be true of God, that He does our will ? Listen : — 
"If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, 
ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done 
unto you." Behold the marvel and the blessing 
of the prayer Hfe! God's wonderful fact that, 
for the man or the woman who is abiding in Him, 
He stands ready to do their will, through prayer. 
Why should it not be so? When we ask God to 
do anything according to His will, why should He 
not do it? God is just as pleased to do that part 
of His will for which you ask, as any part of His 
will in the universe. It is for the honor, and 
glory, and interest of God to do your will, when 
you are asking according to His will. Out there 
on those great wheat farms in the western prai- 
ries is not the owner ready to do the superintend- 
ent's will as well as the superintendent to do the 
owner's will? If the harvesting machine gets out 
of order, and the superintendent asks for its re- 
pair, it is to the interest of the owner to repair it. 
If the grain is mildewed and spoiling, and the su- 
perintendent asks for hands to harvest it, it is to 



45 LIFE TALKS. 

the interest of the owner to answer his request. 
So when we Hve in His will, and are striving to 
do His will, it is to the interest of God's own king- 
dom that that will be done, and it pleases God to 
do it. God is just waiting for us to choose His 
will. And when we choose to do His will, and 
ask for anything according to it, He will do it. I 
tell you, the greatest thought about prayer is not 
that we are praying to God to do something for 
us, but that we are praying to God to carry out 
His mill in this world o f His. And when we pray 
that, God stands ready to to carry it out. *'Ye 
shall ask what ye mill and it shall be done." When 
we say, "Lord, I will to separate myself from sin ; 
I will to come out from the emptiness and foolish- 
ness of the world ; I will to walk closer with Thee ; 
I will to know more of Thy power through com- 
munion with Thee, through Thy Word, through 
separation and service;" when we choose these 
things which are within the will of God, He is 
ready to do our will, because He is simply doing 
His own will in us. 

Finally, are we not the friends of Jesus in this 
sense, that we do His will? May we speak of 
this as the final test as He gives it here, "Ye are 
My friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.'* 
That is the supreme test, dear friends ; — not how 
I feel, but what I am doing. And Christ says, that 
if you and I do His will, this is the test of friend- 
ship with Him. And what is to do His will? 
What is obedience? It is an act, and it is a life. 



THE BLOOD-COVENANT. 47 

The act is the surrender to do His will all through 
our life. Have we done that? The life is to 
carry out the act in every detail of life and to 
shape and fashion that life not according to our 
own will but according to the will of God. And 
if you and I take that step and become His blood- 
covenant friends, then this Book of His becomes 
the revelation of His will to us ; becomes the test 
and guide of our Hfe. If we are living to do His 
will then it matters not how much suffering it 
means ; it matters not what our friends may say ; 
it matters not what the opinions of others may be. 
We are to ask ourselves, "What does the Word of 
my Lord say about this decision, about this step, 
about this indulgence in my life? Whatever it 
says, by God's grace, I am going to do." That 
is what friendship with Jesus means — an act by 
which we give up our lives to do His will, a life 
in which day by day we steadily, persistently, 
with the guidance of this Book, fashion our lives 
according to the will of God. 

And will you notice as we close, what Christ 
declares to be the result? The man, the woman, 
who does this will — what does Christ say about 
them? You remember His reply, when those in 
the crowd that stood near to Jesus said to Him : 
"Master, Thy mother and Thy brethren stand 
without, desiring to speak to Thee," He stretched 
forth His hand towards His disciples, and said: 
"Who is My mother and who are My brethren? 
Behold My mother and My brethren: for who- 



48 LIFE TALKS. 

soever shall do the zi-ill of My Father who is in 
heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and 
mother/' He chose the tenderest, the most beau- 
tiful relationships on earth, and said, "The man 
or the woman who has come into this blood-cov- 
enant relationship with m.e — who has given up his 
or her life to do the will of my Father as I am 
doing it here upon earth — that man, that woman, 
is closer to me than my own flesh and blood kin- 
dred." Ah, how blessed is the relationship He 
invites you and me, His children, to enter into 
with Him to-night ! How precious, how dear we 
are to Him as His friends! And thus let us re- 
member that the supreme test of love to our 
Lord is not our emotional life, but simply this: 
"Ye are ]My friends if ye do My will" It matters 
not how prosaic our life is; it matters not how 
matter-of-fact men and women we are ; it matters 
not that we are not having the w^onderful emo- 
tional experiences other people may have; it 
matters not that we are not naturally intense or 
rapturous, but are quiet, even phlegmatic, in our 
life characteristics and temperam.ent ; if we are 
daily going about simply doing His will, Jesus 
Christ says this is the high and supreme test of 
friendship with Him. Yea, the test of love to 
Him is to lay down our lives to do His will and 
then — simply to do it. 



The God-Planned Life. 



''Created in Christ Jesus unto good works 

which God hath before ordained, that we 
should walk in them." Eph. 2 : 10. 

"Created in Christ Jesus." That means every 
child of God is a new creation in Christ Jesus. 
''Unto good works." And that means every such 
child of God is created anew in Christ Jesus for 
a life of service. "Which God hath before or- 
dained." That means God has laid the plan for 
this life of service in Christ Jesus, ages before 
we came into existence. ''That we should walk 
in them.." "Walk" is a practical word. And 
that means God's great purpose of service for 
the lives of His children is not a mere fancy, but 
a practical reality, to be known and lived out in 
our present, work-a-day life. Therefore all 
through this great text runs the one supreme 
thought that — 

* * * * 
God has a plan for every life in Christ Jesus. 

What a wondrous truth is this! And yet how 

reasonable a one. Shall the architect draw the 

plans for his stately palace? Shall the artist 

sketch the outlines of his masterpiece? Shall 

49 



50 LIPB TALKS. 

the ship-buiider lay cIowr the hnes for his colos- 
sal ship? And yet shall God have no plan for 
the immortal soul which He brings into being 
and puts "in Christ Jesus?" Surely he has. 
Yea, for every cloud that floats across the sum- 
m.er sky; for every blade of grass that points 
its tiny spear heavenward ; for every dew-drop 
that gleams in the morning sun ; for every beam 
of light that shoots across the limitless space 
from sun to earth, God has a purpose and a plan. 
How much m^ore then, for you who are His own, 
in Christ Jesus, does God have a perfect, before- 
prepared life plan. And not only so, but — 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

God has a plan for your life which no other man 
can fulfil. 

"In all the ages of the ages there never has 
been, and never will be a mian, or woman just 
like me. I am. unique. I have no double." That 
is true. No two leaves, no tv/o jewels, no two 
stars, no two lives — alike. Every life is a fresh 
thought from God to the world. There is no 
m.an in all the world who can do your work as 
well as you. And if you do not find, and enter 
into God's purpose for your life, there will be 
something m.issing from the glory that would 
otherv/ise have been there. Every jewel gleams 
with its own radiance. Every flower distils its 
own fragrance. Every Christian has his own 
particular bit of Christ's radiance and Christ's 



THE GOD-PLANNED LIFE. 51 

fragrance which God would pass through him to 
others. Has God given you a particular person- 
aHty? He has also created a particular circle of 
individuals who can be reached and touched by 
that personality as by none other in the wide 
world. And then he shapes and orders your 
life so as to bring you into contact with that very 
circle. Just a hair's breadth of shift in the focus 
of the telescope, and some man sees a vision of 
beauty which before had been all confused and 
befogged. So, too, just that grain of individual 
and personal variation in your life from every 
other man's and some one sees Jesus Christ with 
a clearness and beauty he would discern nowhere 
else. What a privilege to have one's own Christ 
in-dwelt personality, however humble ! What a 
joy to know that God will use it, as He uses 
no other for certain individuals susceptible to it 
as to no other! In you there is just a bit of 
change in the angle of the jewel — and lo, some 
man sees the light! In you there is just a trifle 
of variation in the mingling of the spices — and, 
behold, some one becomes conscious of the fra- 
grance of Christ. 



A man may fail to enter into God's plan for 
his life. 

Among the curiosities of a little fishing village 
on the great lakes where we were summering 



52 LIPB TALKS. 

was a pair of captive eagles. They had been 
captured when but two weeks oW, and confined 
in a large room-like cage. Year after year the 
eaglets grew, until they w^ere magnificent speci- 
mens of their kind, stretching six feet from tip 
to tip of wings. One summer when we came 
back for our usual vacation the eagles were miss- 
ing. Inquiring of the owner as to their disap- 
pearance this story came to us. The owner had 
left the village for a prolonged fishing trip out 
in the lake. While he was absent some mischiev- 
ous boys opened the door of the cage, and gave 
the great birds their liberty. At once they en- 
deavored to escape. But kept in captivity from 
their earliest eaglet days, they had never learned 
to fly. They seemed to realize that God had 
meant them to be more than mere earthlings. 
After all these weary years the instinct for the 
sky and the heavens still smoldered in their 
hearts. And most desperately did they strive to 
exercise it. They floundered about upon the vil- 
lage green. They struggled, and fell, and beat 
their wings in piteous effort to rise into the airy 
freedom of their God-appointed destiny. But 
all in vain. One of them, essaying to fly across 
a small stream, fell helpless into the water and 
had to be rescued from drowning. The other, 
after a succession of desperate and humiliating 
failures managed to attain to the lower-most limb 
of a nearby tree. Thence he was shot to death 
by the hand of a cruel boy. His mate soon shared 



THE GOD-PLANNBD LIFE. S3 

the same hapless fate. And the simple tragedy 
of their hampered lives came to an end. 

Often since has come to us the tragic life-lesson 
of the imprisoned eagles. God had designed for 
these kingly birds a noble inheritance of freedom. 
It was theirs to pierce in royal flight the very eye 
of the mid-day sun. It was theirs to nest in lofty 
crags where never foot of man had trod. It was 
theirs to breast with unwearying pinion the 
storms and tempests of mid-heaven. A princely 
heritage indeed was theirs. But the cruelty of 
man had hopelessly shut them out from it. And 
instead of the limitless liberty planned for them 
had come captivity, helplessness, humiliation, and 
death. Even these birds of the air missed God's 
great plan for their lives. Much more may the 
sons of men. 

Is not this the very thing of which Paul speaks 
when he says: "Work out your salvation with 
fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh 
in you, both to will and to do of his good pleas- 
ure." What are these inner voices which, if we 
heed not, cease? What are these visions which, 
if we follow not, fade ? What are these yearnings 
to be all for Christ which, if we embody not in 
action, die? What are they but the living God 
working in us to will and to do the lifework which 
he has planned for us from all eternity? And it 
is this which you are called upon to "work out." 
Work it out in love. Work it out in daily, faith- 
ful ministry. Work it out as God's works in you. 



54 LIFE TALKS. 

But more than that. You may miss it. You may 
fall short of God's perfect plan for your Hfe. 
Therefore work it out with — fear and trembling ! 
Searching words are these. Words of warning, 
words of tender admonition. That blessed life of 
witnessing, serving, and fruit-bearing which God 
has planned for you in Christ Jesus from all eter- 
nity — work it out ivith trembling. Trembling — 
lest the god of this world bhnd you to the vision 
of service which God is ever holding before you. 
Trembling — lest the low standard of life in fel- 
lovv^-Christians about you lead you to drop yours 
to a like grovelling level. Trembling — lest some 
little circle in the dark ends of the earth should 
fail of the giving, the praying, or the going which 
God has Jong since planned for you. Trembling 
— lest the voices of worldly pleasure and ambition 
dull and deafen your ears to the one voice which 
is ever whispering — follow thou Me : follow thou 
Me." 

^ ^ >Jc jji 

One way of missing God's calling may be by 
''choosing" our own calling. 

Every day men talk of ''choosing" a calling. 
But is not the phrase a sheer misnomer? For 
how can a man ''choose" a "calling" ? If a man 
is called he does not choose. It is the one who 
calls who does the choosing. "Ye have not 
chosen Me, but I have chosen you and ordained 
you that ye should go and bear fruit," says our 



THE GOD-PLANNBD LIFE. 55 

Lord. Men act as though God threw down be- 
fore them an assortment of plans from which 
they might choose what pleases them, even as 
a shop-keeper tosses out a dozen skeins of silk to 
a lady buyer from which she might select that 
which strikes her fancy. But it is not true. It 
is God's to choose. It is ours simply to ascer- 
tain and obey. For next in its eternal moment to 
the salvation of the soul is the guidance of the 
life of a child of God. And God claims both as 
His supreme prerogative. The man who trusts 
God with one, but wrests from Him the other, is 
making a fatal mistake. Would we were taught 
this ere our unskilled hand had time to mar the 
plan [ In default of such teaching let us con- 
fess with humbled hearts the mistakes we have 
made here, in the frailty of our m.ere human 
judgment. Young friend are you standing in that 
trying place where miCn are pressing you to 
"choose" a calling? Are you about to cast the 
die of a self -chosen life work? Do not cast it. 
Do not try to choose. Does not the text say we 
are "created in Christ unto good works?" If 
the plan is in Christ how will you find it unless 
you go to Christ? Therefore go to God simply, 
trustfully, prayerfully and ask Him to show you 
what He has chosen for yoti from all eternity. 
And as you walk in the daily light which He 
sheds upon your path He will surely lead you 
into His appointed life-plan. So shall you be 
saved the sorrow, disappointment, and failure 



S^ LIFE TALKS. 

which follow in the wake of him who "chooses'* 
his own path, and, all too late, comes to himself 
to find out that it pays to trust God in this great 
concern of his life, even as in all others. 

Therefore we must needs admonish one anoth- 
er that a man may miss God's plan for his life. 
He may miss it by his own blindness, wilfulness^ 
disobedience, or self-choosing. But we pass on 
now to the more blessed truth, that — 

^ >fc ^ ^ 

Every child of God can find, and enter into 
God's plan for his life. 

You remember the story of the engineer of the 
Brooklyn bridge. During its building he was in- 
jured. For many long months he was shut up 
in his room. His gifted wife shared his toils, and 
carried his plans to the workmen. At last the 
great bridge was completed. Then the invalid 
architect asked to see it. They put him upon 
a cot, and carried him to the bridge. They placed 
him where he could see the magnificent structure 
in all its beauty. There he lay, in his helpless- 
ness, intently scanning the work of his genius. He 
marked the great cables, the massive piers, the 
mighty anchorages which fettered it to the earth. 
His critical eye ran over every beam, every girder, 
every chord, every rod. He noted every detail 
carried out precisely as he had dreamed it in his 
dreams, and wrought it out in his plans and speci- 
fications. And then as the joy of achievement 



THE GOD-PLANNBD LIPB. 57 

filled his soul, as he saw and realized that it was 
finished exactly as he had designed it; in an ec- 
stasy of delight he cried out: ''It's just like the 
plan; it's just like the plan!" 

Some day we shall stand in the glory and look- 
ing up into His face, cry out: "O God I thank 
Thee that thou, didst turn me aside from my 
wilful and perverse way, to Thy loving and per- 
fect one. I thank Thee that Thou didst ever lead 
me to yield my humble life to Thee. I thank Thee 
that as I day by day, walked the simple pathway 
of service, Thou didst let me gather up one by one 
the golden threads of Thy great purpose for my 
life. I thank Thee, as, like a tiny trail creeping its 
way up some great mountain side, that pathway 
of life has gone on in darkness and light, storm 
and shadow, weakness and tears, failures and fal- 
terings. Thou hast at last brought me to its des- 
tined end. And now that I see my finished life, 
no longer 'through a glass darkly' but in the face 
to face splendor of Thine own glory, I thank 
Thee, O God, I thank Thee that, it's just like the 
plan; it's just like the plan!" 

Then, too, while we do need to walk carefully 
and earnestly that we miss not God's great will 
for us, yet let us not be anxious lest, because 
we are so human, so frail, so fallible, we may 
make some mistakes in the details and specifica- 
tions of that plan. For we will do well to re- 
member this. God has a beautiful way of over- 
ruling mistakes when the heart is right with 



S8 LIFE TALKS. 

Him. That is the supreme essential. The one 
attitude of ours which can mar his purpose of 
love for our lives is the refusal to yield that life 
and will to His own great will of love for it. But 
when that life is honestly yielded, then the mis- 
takes in the pathway which spring from our own 
human infirmities and faUibleness will be sweetly 
and blessedty corrected by God, as we move along 
that path. It is hke guiding a ship. Our trem- 
bling hand upon the wheel may cause trifling 
wanderings from her course. But they seem 
greater to us than they are in reality. And if we 
but hold our craft steadily to the pole-star of 
God's will, as best we know it, she will reach her 
destined port v/ith certainty, notwithstanding the 
swervings that have befallen her in the progress 
of her voyage. 

•jf. -^ -^ -^ 
But now we come face to face with a question 
of suprem.e importance. A_nd that is this : "How- 
shall I ascertain God's plan for my life? How 
shall I be safe-guarded from error? How shall 
I discern the guidance of God from the mis- 
guidance of my own fleshly desires and ambi- 
tions? How shall I find the path in which He 
is calling me to walk ? We answer, first : 

^ JjC ^ ^ 

Believe. 

The trouble with most of us is that we do not 
believe God has such a life-plan for us. We 



THE GOD-PLANNBD IIFB. 59 

take our own way, we lay our own plans, we 
choose our own profession, we decide upon our 
own business without taking God into account at 
all. "According to our faith is it unto us." And 
if we have no faith in God's word in this regard, 
what else can we expect but to miss God's way 
for our lives, and only come back to it after long 
and costly wanderings from His blessed, chosen 
pathway for us ? Ephesians 2 : lo, is as surely 
inspired as Ephesians 2 : 8. The promise of a life- 
plan is as explicit in the one, as the promise of 
salvation is in the other. Brood over this Ephe- 
sian verse. Is it plain ? Is it God's word ? Does 
it not say clearly that God has a life-plan for 
you in Christ Jesus? Then settle down upon it. 
Believe it with all your whole soul. Do not be 
shaken from it. Again — ■ 

^ jj; jf; :S; 

Pray . 

Dr. Henry Poster, founder of the Clifton 
Springs sanitarium, was a man of marvelous 
power with God. A man, too, of great insight 
into the mind and ways of God in the matter of 
guidance in the affairs of life. What was the 
secret of that wondrous power and wisdom? 
Visitors were wont to ask this question of one 
of the older physicians on the staff of that great 
institution. And this was his response. He took 
the visitor by the arm. He led him up-stairs to 
the door of Dr. Foster's office. He led him into 



6o LIPB TALKS. 

this little chamber, across the corner of the room. 
There, krxeeling, he Hfted up the border of a rug 
and showed to the visitor two ragged holes in the 
carpet, worn there by the knees of God's saint 
in his life of prayer. "That, sir, was the secret 
of Henry Foster's power and wisdom in the things 
of God and men." 

Friend, when your bed-room carpet begins to 
wear out after that fashion, the man who lives in 
that room need not have any fear about missing 
God's life plan. For that is the open secret of wis- 
dom, and guidance in the life of every man who 
knows anything about walking with God. "Does 
any man lack wisdom? Let him ask of God." 
Are you one of the men who lack wisdom concern- 
ing God's plan for their lives ? Then ask of God. 
Pray! Pray trustfully, pray steadily, pray ex- 
pectantly, and God will certainly guide you into 
that blessed place where you will be as sure you 
are in His chosen pathway, as you are of your 

salvation. 

* * * * 

Will 

Will what? Will to do God's will for your 
life, instead of your own. Do not launch out 
upon the sea of life headed for a port of your 
own choosing, guided by a chart of your own 
draughting, driven by the power of your own 
selfish pleasures or ambitions. Come to God. 
Yield your life to Him by one act of trustful, 



THE GOD-PLANNED LIFE. 6i 

irrevocable surrender. And then begin to choose 
and to do His will for your life instead of your 
own. So shall you come steadily to know and see 
God's will for that Hfe. Our Lord Jesus clearly 
says this : "If any man will to do my will he shall 
know." Without a shadow of doubt, we will 
begin to know God's will, as soon as we begin to 
choose His will for our lives instead of our own. 

Thus the spiritual field-glasses through which 
we come to see God's will for our lives are dou- 
ble-barreled. Side by side are two lenses. The 
one— "I trust." The other— '1 will." When a 
man can hold both of these to his eyes he will 
see God's will with unclouded clearness. But 
suppose a man says to God "I doubt." Then a 
veil falls over that lens of faith. And suppose 
he says, ''I will not." Then the veil falls over 
the other, the lens of the will, of choice. Straight- 
way that m.an's spiritual vision is in eclipse. He 
walks in a darkness of his own making, springing 
from his own unfaith and self-will, yet the source 
and cause of which he, in his blindness, wholly 
fails to perceive. 

Friend, are you walking in such darkness? 
Do you say, "there is such a veil between you and 
the will of God for your life? Listen. Begin to 
believe in God's plan for your Hfe. That veil 
will become translucent. Begin to will to do 
God's will. That veil will become transparent. 
Begin day by day, actually to do God's will. 
That veil will vanish ! And when it is gone, and 



62 LIFE TALKS. 

you are walking in the full light of God's will 
for your life you will see that it was self-will 
alone which shut out the clear vision of God's 
will. For no man can see the will of God save 
through these two crystal lenses — the trustful 
heart, and the yielded will. 

Does some one say at this point : "But suppose 
I have given m.y life to God to enter into His 
will for it. AAHiat change shall I make in it^ 
vShall I seek a new environment, a new sphere? 
What shall I do ? We answer — 

^ ^ :}f. ^ 

Stay where you are, and do the next thing. 

Talk God's plan, and consecration to it, to 
Christian men and straightway many of them 
think you mean them to give tip their business 
and head at once for the pulpit or the foreign 
missionary field. To come into God's life-plan 
is to go into some other place, as they view it. 
But there never was a greater mistake. Conse- 
cration is not necessarily c?w-location. Not by 
any means. God's plan for a man's life does 
not of necessity lift him out from his present 
realm of life and surroundings. It is not a new 
sphere God is seeking. It is a new man in the 
present sphere! It is not transference. It is 
transformation. The trouble is not usually with 
the place. It is with the man in the place. And 
when a man consecrates his life to God to find 



THE GOD-PLANNED LIFE. 63 

and enter into God's perfect plan for that life, 
God will usually keep him right where he is, but 
living for God and His kingdom instead of liv- 
ing for self. So, until God shows you differently, 
stay where you are, and live for God. 



// God zvanfs you clsezvkere He zmll lead you 
there; be sure to follow. 

We have seen that consecration is not neces- 
sarih/ dis-location. Yet it may be. That God 
usually keeps a man where he is, w^hen he 
yields his life to Him. Yet not ahvays. God 
may lift you clear out from the sphere in which 
you are moving. God may completely change 
your environment, as well as change you. God 
may take you out of your business or pro- 
fession, and send you to the uttermost parts 
of the earth as a chosen messenger of His, 
"But how will this come about," do you say? 
As you do tlie next thing. For God's plan 
for your life w^ill not burst from the heavens in 
one splendid panoramic vision of his purpose for 
it. Rather it comes day by day to the man who 
faithfully does the thing next at hand. God's 
searchlight falls upon only one bend in the river 
at a time. Round that and you will have light 
upon the next. The golden chain of God's great 
purpose for your life and mine is woven of the 
single links which we lay hold of, one at a time, 
along the pathway of daily opportunity. By and 



64 LIPB TALKS. 

by, when we have gathered enough Hnks, the 
chain begins to appear. The man who faithfully 
picks up the links need never fear about missing 
the chain. Therefore do the next thing. As 3^ou 
do it then this thread of daily service becomes 
in God's hands, like the clew to a maze. By it 
God leads you on and on in your pathway until 
you are out from all the labyrinth of darkness 
and uncertainty, into the clear shining of His 
will for your Hfe. Therefore do the next thing 
patiently, faithfully, lovingly. Teach the class, 
visit the sick, comfort the sorrowing, preach the 
Word, use the tract and leaflet, witness for Him 
just where you are. And as you thus serve if 
God wants you elsewhere he will surely lead you 
there. Only do you be sure to follozu. And thus 
following some of us will land in China, India, 
Africa. And some of us will abide just where 
we are. But all of us will be where He wants 
us. And that is, in the plan. 

"Ah," says some one, "this is all very well for 
the young, and the strong who have all of life 
before them. But it is too late for me. My 
life has been full of blunders and failures. It 
is only after years of wandering that I have come 
to Christ. There is naught left for me but the 
memory of mistakes, and the fragments of a 
vanished and broken life." Listen, friend, to this 
truth, as we part to-night: 

^ 5jC 5fJ 5f£ 



THE GOD-PLANNBD LIFB. 65 

God is the only one who can take a seemingly 

shattered life and make a beautiful Ufe 

from the fragments. 

Pave you ever heard this story? In a cer- 
tain old town was a great cathedral. And in 
that cathedral was a wondrous stained glass 
window. Its fame had gone abroad over the 
land. From miles around people pilgrimaged to 
gaze upon the splendor of this masterpiece of art. 
One day there came a great storm. The vio- 
lence of the tempest forced in the window, and it 
crashed to the marble floor, shattered into a hun- 
dred pieces. Great was the grief of the people 
at the catastrophe which had suddenly bereft the 
town of its proudest work of art. They gathered 
up the fragments, huddled them in a box, and 
carried them to the cellar of the church. One 
day there came along a stranger, and craved per- 
mission to see the beautiful window. They told 
him of its fate. He asked what they had done 
with the fragments. And they took him to the 
vault and showed him the broken morsels of 
glass. "Would you mind giving these to me?" 
said the stranger. "Take them along," was the 
reply, "they are no longer of any use to us." 
And the visitor carefully lifted the box and car- 
ried it away in his arms. Weeks passed by ; then 
one day there came an invitation to the custo- 
dians of the cathedral. It was from a famous 
artist, noted for his master-skill in glass-craft. 



66 



LIFE TALKS. 



It summoned them to his study to inspect a 
stained^ glass window, the work of his genius. 
Ushering them into his studio he stood them 
before a great veil of canvass. At the touch of 
his hand upon a cord the canvass dropped. And 
there before their astonished gaze shone a stained 
glass window surpassing in beauty all their eyes 
had ever beheld. As they gazed entranced upon 
its rich tints, wondrous pattern, and cunning 
workmanship, the artist turned and said: "This 
window I have wrought from the fragments of 
your shattered one, and it is now ready to be re- 
placed." Once more a great window shed its 
beauteous light into the dim aisles of the old 
cathedral. But the splendor of the new far sur- 
passed the glory of the old, and the fame of its 
strange fashioning filled the land. 

Reader, do you say that your plans have been 
crushed ? Thank God and take heart. Have 
you not long since learned that the best place 
for m^any of your plans is the trash pile? And 
that often you must fling them there before your 
blinded eyes can see God's own, better plan for 
3'our Hfe? And how is it with your life? Has 
sin blighted it? Have the mistakes of early 
years seemingly wrecked it? Have joy and 
sweetness vanished from it? Does there seem 
nought left for you but to walk its weary tread- 
mill until its days of darkness and drudgery shall 
end? Then know this. Jesus Christ is a match- 
less life-mender. Try Him. He will take that 



THE GOD-PLANNBD LIPB. 67 

seemingly shattered life and fashion a far more 
beautiful one from its fragments than you your- 
self could ever have wrought from the whole. 
In Him your weary soul shall find its longed-for 
rest. And the fragments that remain of God's 
heritage of life to you shall mean in gladsome 
days to come, more than all the vanished years 
that are crooning their sad lament in your inner- 
most soul to-night. 



Why do I drift on a pathless sea. 
With neither compass, nor star, nor chart, 
When, as I drift, God's own plan for nie, 
Waits at the door of m}^ slow-trusting heart? 

Down from the heavens it dropsi like a scroll, 
Each day a bit will my Lord unroll. 
Each day a mite of the veil will uplift ; 
Why should I stray? Why falter and drift? 

Drifting — when God'^ at the helm to steer : 
Drifting — when God lays the course so clear ; 
Drifting — when straight into port I might sail ; 
Drifting — when heaven lies just within hail. 

Help me, my God, in the plan to believe ; 

Help me my fragment each day to receive. 

Oh, that my will may with Thine have no strife ! 

For the God-yielded will finds the God-planned life. 



Believing is Seeing. 



"Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst be- 
lieve, thou shouldst see the glory of Godf" (Jno. 
11:40.) 

The world says seeing is believing. Jesus 
Christ says believing is seeing. The world's 
maxim is familiar enough. The man who sees 
believes. We come into knowledge through the 
channel of vision. We know the sky, the stars, 
the clouds, the sea, because we see them with our 
very eyes. Yet just as real, and quite as sim- 
ple, is the truth that the man who believes shall 
see. Faith ever issues into vision. The man 
who trusts shall know. The believer becomes a 
seer. And note fxrst here, that — 

* H: * * 

The faith which takes God's word shall see. 

We remember one year in our boyhood when 
the Christmas tide had come. Some one must 
needs play Santa Claus for the children, and the 
lot fell upon us. Our stripling figure was filled 
out to the proper Santa Claus rotundness by a 
convenient cushion. Our pockets were stuffed 
to the full with the various gifta of love. And 
we went about the ministry of distribution. 
68 



BBLIBVING IS SBBING. 69 

From one to another the packets were passed 
until, as we thought, all had been parcelled out 
Then came a request from one of the family 
circle: 'Tut your hand in your right pocket. 
There is something there for you." But we 
shook our head skeptically. Did not we know 
all the gifts that had been stowed in those pock- 
ets? And did not we know there was nothing 
else there? But again came the word of re- 
quest. And still we shook our head in decided 
negative. At last more urgently, "Well, put your 
hand in the pocket, and try. Believe and you 
will see." And then, to satisfy a loved one, the 
hand was slipped into the designated pocket. 
And, lo, out came a parcel, marked with our 
own name. Within was a beautiful gold watch, 
the gift of a loving father to his boy. It had 
been slipped into the pocket all unknown to us. 
If we had not believed we never would have seen. 
But when we beHeved we saw. When we be- 
lieved — came realization. When we believed — 
came the joy of possession. 

Unsaved friend, it is right here that you are 
making a fatal mistake, a mistake which will 
work your eternal undoing. You say you will 
not believe until you see. You must have some 
experience of Christ before you will believe in 
Christ. But know this. You will have a definite 
-experience of Christ just as soon as you exer- 
cise a definite faith in Christ. And you will 
never have it before. When you believe the 



70 LIFB TALKS. 

light will come. When you believe the peace, 
the joy, the assurance will come. Like Paul you 
will "know whom you have believed." But that 
means you will never know until you believe. 
Believing will surely bring you to seeing. But 
all the seeing in the world will never bring you 
to believing. Have a definite transaction with 
Jesus Christ. Definitely accept Him as your 
Saviour. Definitely confess Him before men as 
such. And as surely as you do this you will 
definitely, know the salvation of God in Christ. 
Believe and you shall see. 

^ jf; ^ ^ 

The faith which prays shall see. 

You have been praying for showers of bless- 
ing, and not even a drop has fallen. You have 
been praying for some barrier to melt away, and 
it seems to have grown even greater. You have 
been crying to God for a flood of light upon your 
darkened path, and not a single gleam has yet 
shone. Do not lose heart. Do not faint by the 
way. For the faith which prays shall see. Peti- 
tion shall end in vision. The cry of intercession 
shall give place to the song of thanksgiving. 

A young man left a New England city to go 
as a missionary. Time passed. One night his 
pastor in the homeland was awakened in the 
dead of night beset with the fear that his young 
parishioner was in peril. A great burden of 
prayer was rolled upon him. He arose and gave 



BHLinviNG IS SBBING. 71 

himself for hours to earnest intercession for the 
safety of his friend. At that very time this was 
happening in the heart of Africa : The mission- 
ary, accompanied by a native, had started out 
to hunt. As they journeyed they ran upon two 
lions and a lioness. The missionary fired, kill- 
ing one of the lions, and wounding the other. 
The lioness seemingly fled. In fact she had only 
hidden in the jungle. The missionary now ad- 
vanced and fired again upon the wounded lion. 
The rifle had scarcely cracked when the great 
brute lioness leaped upon him from her ambush. 
With one blow she struck him to the ground. 
In an instant her teeth were sunk in his arm 
and her claws tearing fiercely at his shoulder. 
He cried out to the native to shoot, but the latter 
could not, as the missionary was between him 
-and the lioness. In his panic, however, the na- 
tive fired his rifle in the air. At once the lioness 
looked up. She dropped the missionary from 
her jaws. He rolled over into the bottom of a 
shallow ditch. And then instead of leaping «pon 
him and finishing her work, the lioness turned 
and trotted into the jungle. The bleeding mis- 
sionary was helped into camp. There, after six 
Aveeks, he recovered completely from an experi- 
ence which it is given to but few men to pass 
through. God had indeed "stopped the mouths 
'of lions^' for him. The tidings of his wonderful 
escape went back home to his faithful pastor. 
And he who had prayed now saw. He saw the 



72 LIFE TALKS. 

peril which had menaced his friend. He saw 
why God had aroused him at midnight to pray. 
He saw the miraculous deliverance which had 
come to pass. Because he prayed, and prayed in 
faith, he saw the glory of God in wondrous an- 
swer. And so may you — if you pray likewise. 

Abraham prayed and saw God meet his peti- 
tion again and again for wicked Sodom and 
Gomorrah. Moses prayed and saw God answer 
for disobedient Israel. Hezekiah prayed and saw 
the utter rout of the Syrian host. Jesus prayed 
and the wondering people saw Lazarus break 
forth from the gloom of the grave. The churcli 
prayed and Peter saw the glory of the Lord and 
the opening gates of prison cell and ward. 

Wherefore though no man's — hand — cloud of 
promise has yet risen upon your horizon — pray. 
and you shall see. Though as yet no drops from 
the coming down-pour fall upon your upturned 
face of intercession — pray and you shall see. 
Though the granite barrier against which you 
are hurling your prayer of faith has not budged 
one hair's breadth — pray, and you shall see. 
Though the stubborn heart for which you cry 
unto God in the dark hours of the night does not 
seem to abate one atom of its hardness — pray, 
and you shall see. For the faith which prays. 
and prays, and prays, shall surely see. The 
prayer which is in the will of God shall surely 
see the glory of God. 



BBLIBVING IS SBHING. n 

The faith which yields shall see, 

God is not satisfied with taking your spirit 
into heaven. He wants to use your hfe here 
upon earth. And so you have come to another 
step of faith — the faith which yields. You have 
come face to face with a decision which, ne::t 
to acceptance of Christ as your Saviour, is the 
most momentous a man can ever make — the de- 
cision to consecrate your Hfe to God. And yoii 
shrink back. You are sore afraid. You do not 
see all that consecration means. You do not see 
how God can make use of your modest talents. 
You do not see how He can adjust your strait- 
ened and hedged pathway to a life of devotion to 
His will. To all this God has but one answer. 
Believe and you shall see. For in your life you 
will see the glory of God whenever, as best you 
know, you place that life in the will of God. 

Here is a plain strip of canvass. Before it 
stands the master painter. He says, **Do you 
see that golden sunset? Trust yourself to me 
and I will paint its glory in your face." And 
the canvass says, "I am coarse in texture. I am 
scant in size. I do not see how you can fill me 
with the glory of that sunset sky." And the 
master says, ''Yield, and you- shall see." 

Here is a black mass of ore, fresh-dug from 
the grime of the earth. It is soiled, stained, and 
mis-shapen. The master workman takes it in 
his hand. "There is naught in me for you," 



74 UFB TALKS. 

says the ore. And the goldsmith says, "I will 
take you, and melt you, and mold, and carve, 
and chase you, until there shall be wrought from 
your blackness a precious cup of gold fit to 
grace the feast-day of a king." "Yield and you 
shall see." 

And here is a plain, every-day life — your life, 
my friend. And the ]\Iaster stands before it, 
and speaks, "Give me your life. It matters not 
how humble it is; give it to me. And I will chas- 
ten it, and enrich it, and anoint it with my Spirit, 
and glorify My Father in heaven through it." 
And you are saying, '*I do not see all that con- 
secration means. I do not ste any niche of 
Christian service into which I can fit." And to 
all this the Master of our lives has still the same 
answer, ''Yield — and you shall seef' 

A man stepped up to us one day at the cl«se 
of a meeting, and said, "I want to tell you a 
story. Years ago I was teaching a class of boys 
in a certain city. There w^re eight boys in the 
class. It was in the days before the lesson helps 
were so plentiful as now, and we were confined to 
the use of the Bible alone. There was but 
one Bible for the whole class. This was passed 
from hand to hand in due order. I noticed es- 
pecially how the second boy in the class acted 
when the book reached him in turn. He fum- 
bled at the leaves. He hesitated and halted at 
words of but ordinary difficulty. The big words 
he skipped entirely. Yet he was most faithful 



BBLIEVIXG IS SEEING. 75 

and persistent in it all. ]\Iy brother," said the 
speaker, "that boy was Dwight L. bloody." 

Dwight Moody might have deemed his talents 
too modest for God to use. He might have 
thought it useless to yield them to Him. He 
might have decided to lay them up in the nap- 
kin. But he did nothing of the kind. He yield- 
ed his all to God, as it was. He trusted. He 
followed on. And the world has not yet ceased 
to see the glory of God in his wondrous life. 

And so shall it be with 3'ou. Never mind how 
feeble your efforts, how frequent your failures. 
Never mind that you cannot see how or where 
God can use so humble a life as yours. Never 
mind that it seems so fettered by circumstances 
that God can surely never free it and use it. 
That is for Him, not for you. Keep off God's 
ground. It is for you simply to yield. God will 
take care of the rest. And as you believe enough 
to yield you will surely see the glory of God. 



The faith zi'hich zvaifs shall see. 

The helpless imist wait. The patient do wait. 
But the strong, and the eager — how hard it is 
for them to wait! To wait for the salvation of 
a soul when your heart is breaking wdth the 
suspense; to wait for the consecration of a life 
while you see the world laying waste its precious- 
ness ; to wait for laborers to be thrust forth while 
the harvest is whitening in death; to wait for 



LIPB TALKS. 



God to bring things to pass and see Satan's rav* 
ages while you wait ; such waiting takes a mighty 
faith. And yet faith which waits shall surely 
see. The glory of God comes to the waiting one. 

You have been taking a long and wearisome 
railroad journey. For days you have been trav- 
eling through the dust and heat> You are near- 
ing home, and brook with impatience each delay. 
At midnight you are awakened by the slowing of 
your train. It bumps, jars, and creaks, and finally 
comes to a standstill. You wait, and wait. 
You peer out into the gloom with your face 
pressed against the car window. Five, ten, twen- 
ty minutes pass. Still all is quiet, with no sign 
of a move. You drum at the window pane. You 
turn wearily in your berth. You wonder when 
the weary wait will end. Presently there is a 
sound in the distance. The rattle and clatter 
come nearer. Then there is a rush, a roar, the 
red glare of a great fiery eye and the monster 
engine and its trail of coaches sweeps by you in 
an instant and is swallawed up in the encircling 
darkness. You have zuaited long. Now you see. 
You see in vision the awful death which would 
have come to you had you gone on. You see 
the wise forethought which kept you waiting on 
that track. It was a passing siding and the one 
safe thing to do was to wait. Had you gone on 
it would have been to the wreckage and death of 
a collision. 

And so perchance it is with yourself. Is your 



BBLIBVING IS SEEING. 77 

heart in the mission field and your body at home ? 
Are you eager for the Master's service, yet hin- 
dered on every side? Is the horizon of Hfe so 
narrowed by circumstances as to become almost 
unbearable? Yet God's waiting time is best for 
you. Wait — and you will see your barriers razed. 
Wait — and you will see your circumstances 
change. Wait — and you will see God bringing 
things to pass beyond all your dreams. Wait and 
you shall see. For ''He worketh for him that 
waits for Him." 

* * * * 

The faith which does not understand — shall see. 

Mary and Martha could not understand what 
their Lord was doing. Both of them said to 
Him, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother 
had not died." Back of it all we seem to read 
th-eir thought, "Lord, we do not understand why 
you have stayed away so long. We do not un- 
derstand how you could let death come to the 
man whom you loved. We do not understand 
how 3^ou could let sorrow and suffering ravage 
our lives when your presence might have stayed 
it all. Why did you not come? It is too late 
now. For already he has been dead these four 
days." And to it all Jesus had but one great 
truth. "You may not understand ; but I tell you 
if you believe, you will see." 

Abraham could not understand why God 
should ask the sacrifice of his boy. But he trust- 



78 LIFE TALKS. 

ed. And he saw the glory of God in his restora- 
tion to his love. Moses could not understand 
why God should keep him forty years in the 
wilderness. But he trusted. And he saw when 
God called him to lead forth Israel from bond- 
age. Joseph could not understand the cruelty of 
his brethren, the false witness of a perfidious wo- 
man, and the long years of an unjust impris- 
onment. But he trusted. And he saw at last 
the glory of God in it all. Jacob could not under- 
stand the strange providence which permitted 
that same Joseph to be torn from his father's 
love. But he too saw the glory of God when 
he looked into the face of that same Joseph as 
the viceroy of a great king, and the preserver of 
his own life and the lives of a gr<;at nation. 

And so perhaps it is in your life. You say, 
"I do not understand why God let my dear one 
be taken. I do not understand why affliction 
has been permitted to smite me. I do not un- 
derstand the devious paths by which God is lead- 
ing me. I do not understand why plans and pur- 
poses that seemed good to my eyes should be 
baffled. I do not understand why blessings I 
so much need are so long delayed, and some- 
times never come at all. There are so many 
things in God's dealings with me I cannot un- 
derstand." Friend, you do not have to under- 
stand all God's way with you. God does not 
expect you to understand them. You do not ex- 
pect your child to understand, only believe. And 



BBLIBVING IS SBBING. 79 

some day you will see the glory of God in the 
things you do not understand. For we walk by 
faith, and not by sight. And the glory comes 
from believing, not from understanding. Re- 
member this : 

The things nje do not understand are all work- 
ing together for good to them that trust. (Rom. 
8:28.) 

You go into a great silk mill. Running the 
length of the room is a massive steel shaft. It 
is whirling away, hundreds of revolutions per 
minute. All the wheels upon it are running in 
the same direction with it. But across the room 
are a score of other smaller shafts, called ''coun- 
ter shafts." They are all linked to the great main 
shaft. But they are all running in exactly the 
opposite direction. You look up to your friend 
who is guiding you through the great mill, and 
say, "I do not understand these counter-shafts. 
They all seem to be running the wrong way, op- 
posite to the great main shaft. They must surely 
all be defeating the purpose of the owner of the 
mill." "Ah," says your friend, "you are mistaken 
about that. Just follow me, and you will see." 
And you will follow him down the long aisles into 
the weaving room. And there you see the busy 
looms, driven by these very counter-shafts, turn- 
ing out yard after yard of the rich, lustrous silk 
for the making of which this great mill is being 
run. You see that the very counter-shafts which 
seemed to be working against the main shaft are 



8o LIFE TALKS. 

in reality all working together with that shaft to 
carry out the purpose of the mill-owner in turn- 
ing out the beautiful silken fabric. 

Child of God, all things are not good. Nor 
does God say that. For sin is not good. And 
sorrow is not good. Nor is suffering good, in it- 
self. But "all things work together for good." 
And God does say that. And the things you do 
not understand, the things which seem to be all 
working against you, all these are really w^ork- 
ing together to turn out from God's workshop 
His one perfect, finished product — a man or 
woman conformed to the image of His Son, 
Jesus Christ. And concerning these "all things" 
come Christ's sweet words to us, as to them of 
old, "Said I not unto thee that if thou would st 
believe thou shouldst see the glory of God?" 

Whate'er is best for me, my God will bring to me, 

If I do only wait, and trust, and pray, 
Whate'er seems dark to me, sliall end in light for me; 

'Tis but the gloaming which fore-runs the day. 



The Spirit-Filled Life. 

(Jno. 7:38-39-) 

*'He that believeth on nve, as the Scripture hath 
said, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers 
of living water/' 

''But this spake he of the Spirit, which they 
that believe on him should receive." 

If, some summer day, you were tramping 
down a certain mountain pass, you would, by- 
and-by, come to one of the most famous of Swiss 
glaciers. In the perpendicular wall of that great 
glacier, summer sun and warm winds have hol- 
lowed out a great ice cavern. You enter the arch 
and, as you stand in the fantastic cave, you are 
chilled through with its cold. Ice above you ; ice 
before you; ice all about you; — ^masses of ice; 
miles of ice. And now, as you gaze, there springs 
up at your feet a crystal stream of water from 
the very heart of the glacier, and begins its jour 
ney down the valley. You could almost step 
across it where it finds its birth. But, like the 
true Christian life, as it goes it grows, and a few 
miles down the valley, it is a strong, deep, leap- 
ing stream. The birds dip their bills into it, and, 
drinking, lift their heads to God as if in thanks- 
giving. The trees slip their roots down the bank 
81 



S2 LIFE TALKS. 

and draw up its moisture. The lowing herds 
sink their nostrils in its pools and drink of its re- 
freshing. By and by it enters a great lake, and 
seems lost But it finds issue, and crossing cen- 
tral France, it takes a sudden turn and runs 
southward, and then, at its mouth, broad enough 
for fishermen to draw their seines, and for great 
ships to sail upon its bosom, it is at last lost in 
Europe's greatest inland sea. And this beautiful, 
sparkling river, with all its refreshing and bless- 
ing, springs from the frozen heart of a great 
Swiss glacier! 

Have you ever looked up into the Lord's face 
and cried, "O, Christ, how cold my heart is! 
How cold when I study Thy blessed Book with 
all its wondrous words of life; how callous it 
seems in the sacred chamber of secret prayer; 
how icy as I look with such seeming unconcern 
upon the sin and suffering of the lost world; 
how frozen in its lack of love for the Christless 
millions of heathendom! O Christ, is there any- 
thing that will melt this ice-berg heart of mine, 
and cause a river of love and peace and power to 
flow forth from it to the world about me ?" And 
Jesus Christ says, "There is. I have it." The 
God who can cause a river of refreshing to break 
forth from the frigid heart of an Alpine glacier 
can make a river of life burst forth from your 
cold heart. _ Are you a believer? Then listen. 
"Out of your" — do you heed it? — "out of your 
innerm.ost being shall flow rivers of living water." 



i 



THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE. 83 

Let us be glad that Christ has made this truth 
so plain. Metaphors and similes are often hard 
to explain. One man has one interpretation, an- 
other man a different one. But here there is no 
chance for wrangling or disputings ; none for dif- 
ference of interpretation. The Holy Spirit in- 
terprets this passage Himself. For the Word of 
God says of this beautiful figure, "This spake He 
of the Spirit which they that believe on Him 
should receive," There is no room for doubt 
about it. God is talking of a river of spiritual 
blessing; of the river of His own life that He 
means shall flow from the heart and life of every 
child of His. And no power in earth has a right 
to cheat us of that blessed river of life. It is 
our birthright, and no man can keep us out of 
it if we fulfil the simple conditions Christ gives. 



This river of life is the normal life of the 
Christian. 

We recall a glorious morning drive under the 
sky of a southern spring day. The world seemed 
intoxicated with life. The tree-roots were suck- 
ing life from the earth in which they were hid. 
The trunks were passing it upward to the branch- 
es. The branches were pouring it forth to the 
very tips of the swelling buds. The seeds buried 
in the ground were quickening with life. The 
day was humming with the drone and buzz of 



84 LIFE TALKS. 

insect life. The very air you breathed made the 
pulsing blood to leap and thrill with life. And 
the thought was borne home with power, "If 
God's normal plan for His physical world is one 
of such abounding, over-flowing life, why should 
it not be the same for the spiritual life of His 
own children?" "Ah," you say, "but this river 
of the Spirit is the exceptional life. It is beyond 
the ordinary. It is not the normal life of the 
believer of to-day," Are we sure of that? What 
is the believer^s normal life? Is the tisual life of 
the Christian the normal life God has designed 
for him ? Or, does it not rather reveal the shame 
of his shortcoming of it? 

To know naught of the power of God ; to live 
a barren, fruitless life in the kingdom of God ; to 
have made light in the service of God: to be 
so allied with the world as hardly to be known 
as the children of God — is this the normal life of 
God's child? Nay. never. It may be the usual 
life — alas for that! — but it is never the normal 
life. It may be the one we are living. But it is 
an awful sag from the one Christ means us to 
live. 

Would you look upon a picture of the normal 
Hf e ? Here it is. Mark it well. "And the mul- 
titude of them that believed were of one heart 
and one soul : and great grace was upon them all : 
and all that believed were together: and they, 
continuing daily with one accord in the temple, 
and breaking bread from house to house,, did eat 



THB SPIRIT-FILLBD LIFB. 85 

their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, 
praising God and having favor with all the peo- 
|)le. And the Lord added to the church daily such 
as were being saved." Lives filled with grace and 
joy, love and unity, testimony and power, and 
favor both with men and God — these were the 
normal lives in those glad days. Yea, and God 
means these to be the normal lives yet. Verily, 
this life is not the exception in God's plan. It is 
the type. It is the worldly, powerless, fruitless 
Christian life which is abnormal, that is, away 
from the normal. The Spirit-filled life is God's 
ow^n pattern in the mount: God's own perfect 
model for our lives. For God never has designed 
and never will endure any substitute for the in- 
dividual, consecrated, Spirit-filled life, and any 
church which falls short of this high ideal will 
miss its high calling however pretentious its 
claims, however elaborate its organization. 



This river of life is in iis zvho BthitvE. 

A belated ship had come in from sea. Her 
water barrels were exhausted. Her crew were 
perishing with thirst. By and by they sighted 
another vessel, and the cry went up from the 
perishing men, "Send us water; send us water." 
Back from the captain of the other ship came the 
strange reply: — "Throw over your pails and 
draw." "But we want not this salt water to mad- 
den our thirst. We are famishing for life-giving 



86 UFB TALKS. 

water." Back again came the same strange re- 
ply: — "Throw over your pails and draw." Once 
again with parched lips and burning throats, the 
now desperate crew called for water. And then 
came back the answer: — "You are in the mouth 
of the Amazon. Throw over your pails and 
draw." And, sure enough, all unknown to them- 
selves, they had sailed into the mouth of the 
Amazon, which is, at mid-river, so wide as to 
be out of sight of land. And, all the while they 
were thirsting, perishing, and crying for water, 
the sweet, fresh water of that great river was 
all about them, and they needed only to draw, to 
drink, and find life. 

Just so are men and women crying out to God 
for the Holy Spirit to come : pleading for a bap- 
tism of the Holy Spirit; waiting to receive the 
Holy Spirit. Yet, all the while, the Holy Spirit 
is here. For this river of life, this Spirit of the 
living God, becomes the possession of every one 
of His children upon beHef in Jesus Christ for 
salvation. H there were no other test to prove 
this than Christ's own word here that would seem 
to be all-sufficient. How clear and explicit it is. 
"He that helieveth out of his innermost being 
shall flow." "But this spake he of the Spirit 
which they that believe on Him should receive." 
No other condition named, none other needed, but 
this simple one of faith in Him for salvation. 
The faith which trusts Him then for salvation: 
and then the faith which presses on to give the 



THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE. 87 

life to Him in dedication: which commits all 
things to His keeping: which draws day by day 
upon Him for His resurrection life: which con- 
stantly leans upon and lives upon Him for all 
things: — it is this faith alone which the fuller, 
more complete, and more all-sweeping it becomes, 
brings to the child of God an ever-increasing, 
ever-enriching knowledge of the indwelling Spirit 
of God 

Of like import is our Lord's word to His dis- 
ciples in the fourteenth of John. There He tells 
them that the Father will send them "another 
Comforter." ''For He dwelleth with you and 
shall be in you." That word "'another" is signi- 
ficant. There are two words for it in the Greek. 
One means another of a different kind. The sec- 
ond means another of the same kind. Interest- 
ingly enough, our English w^ord "another" con- 
tains this double meaning. For example : You go 
into a hardware store to buy a pen-knife. You 
select one seemingly perfect. But when you 
come to use it you find it otherwise. The edge 
is dull. The steel is brittle and worthless. The 
first strain you put upon the blade it snaps in two. 
You go back to the merchant and say: "This 
knife does not please me at all. I want another." 
You mean another of a different kind. But, now 
suppose when you buy your second knife you 
find it just right. The blade is keen as a razor. 
The steel is of the finest quality. The handle is 
of a beautiful pearl. You are delighted with 



88 LIFE TALKS. 

your purchase. You think of a friend to whom 
you would Hke to give one like it. So you go 
back again to the merchant and say — "I am de- 
lighted with this* knife. Please give me another." 
And, now you mean another of the same kind, 
exactly like the one you have just bought. 

When the Lord Jesus was going away from His 
own and said "The Father will send you another 
Comforter," He used the Greek word which 
means "another of the same kind." That is, the 
very same as Himself. "The very same Hfe you 
have seen flowing from Me; the very same the 
Father sent down from Heaven with Me; the 
very same by which He has done His wondrous 
works through Me; that very same Holy Spirit 
shall be in you, even as He was not in the Old 
Testament saints. He was with them; but he 
shall be in you." And so with all reverence, yet 
with all joy and gladness of heart may we say 
that the very same Holy Spirit who dwelt in the 
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is dwelling in 
us, God's children. Let us believe upon His word, 
that He is so indwelling in all of us who are be- 
lievers in Him, and just waiting for a chance to 
live out His life in all its fullness through us. 

And so we pass naturally to our next thought, 
that 

This river of life will :?ILL us as we yield. 

The stream of life and power from God runs 
along the river-bed of the will of God. \\^here- 



THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE. 89 

fore the man or woman who is most fully in the 
will of God must most fully know the life and 
fullness of God. The one Man who had the 
Spirit ''without measure" was He who at the be- 
ginning said to God, **Lo, I came to do Thy will." 
In other words, self-will is a dyke; the yielded 
will is a channel. The dyke of self-will keeps 
out the fulness of God's life. But the channel of 
the yielded will furtiishes an avenue for its out- 
flow. Why does the harp breathe forth its rav- 
ishing strains under the hand of the master- 
harper? Because it is yielded to him. Why is 
the molten bronze filled with every outline of the 
beauty of the mould? Because it is yielded to it. 
Why does the great ship plough her way through 
storm and surge to her destined haven? Because 
she is yielded to the will and touch of the helms- 
man. If the harp, and the bronze, and the ship 
each had a will of its own it could hinder the 
master's highest purpose for it. You do have 
such a will. And you can resist God. There- 
fore you must needs yield the life to Him, if so 
be that He may fill it. And that fuller life will 
come. It may not be in a flash. It may 
come by degrees. But as you yield your life by 
one definite act, and then, day by day, learn to 
live out that act in a life of yieldedness and min- 
istry, God's river of life will surely and steadily 
manifest itself from your innermost being. 



90 UPE TALKS. 

This river of life will flow forth from us as zve 

SERVE. 

That was a sweet prayer of a young Christian 
girl — "Lord, fill me to overflowing. I cannot hold 
much. But I can overflow a great deal." And 
she was right. For with many the desire con- 
cerning the Holy Spirit is to hoid, and to enjoy. 
Whereas with God it is to give, and to overflow 
to others. For we see the* Spirit of God here 
pictured as a great, life-giving river. But every 
river needs an outlet. When it has none it ceases 
to be a river, and becomes only a stagnant pool. 
The river of the Spirit is subject to the same 
great river-law. It seeks an outlet for the divine 
outflow of life and love in everyday, practical 
ministry to others. It begins its flow as soon as 
it finds a channel. And it keeps it up so long as 
we remain such. Jesus does not say ''In his in- 
nermost being shall stay" but "out from his in- 
nermost being shall flow'' these living streams. 
That is the one purpose for which rivers exist — 
to flow. Cut off their outlet and you stop the 
flow. 

Here is an open secret for us all. The man or 
woman who will offer the Spirit-river this simple 
outlet of humble, willing service will know His 
steady over-flow. People plunge the probe of 
self-examination into their inner selves, seeking 
all sorts of inward, subjective causes for their 
failure of spiritual life and experience. Ordinarily 



THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE. 91 

the reason for that failure is amazingly simple, 
and near at hand. Is the life selfish, and self- 
centered ? Is it failing in daily, practical ministry 
to others ? And would you know the remedy ? It 
is this. Do not try to shut up the Spirit in a 
stagnant pool of selfishness. Let Him have His 
river-way of flow through outlet — the outlet of 
loving, practical service to others. Try this. 
Then all your spiritual moods and morbidness 
will disappear in the daily, joyful consciousness 
of His steady outflow through the channel of 
service. 

There comes to mind a dear railroad friend, a 
conductor on a freight train. Not a man of learn- 
ing as the world counts learning. But he knew 
God. There came to him a time when the battle 
was on over the consecration of his life to God. 
Coming from his train one night long after mid- 
night he fought out this battle in the woods on a 
hill back of his home town. There in the dark- 
ness he gave his life to God. From that time the 
river of life flowed with increasing power and 
abundance from the railroad man's innermost be- 
ing. One day he w^as taking his train to a distant 
city. In the train was a stock-car containing a 
valuable race horse, on its way to the city races. 
In charge of the horse was a special care-taker. 
By and by, for some cause, the train was side- 
tracked and held in waiting. As the wait grew 
more tedious this man grew very angry. He be- 
gan to stride up and down the track, fiercely 



92 LIPB TALKS. 

cursing and blaspheming. The Christian conduc- 
tor bore it as long as he could. Then walking up 
to the godless blasphemer, he put his hand upon 
the latter's shoulder and said, gently, "My friend, 
I wish you would cease taking that Name in vain. 
It is the most precious Name in the world to me, 
and it grieves me to hear it blasphemed." As he 
talked on in this strain of the Man who had died 
for him, to redeem him from death and sin, a 
great change came over the blasphemer. He 
ceased cursing. Evidently he was profoundly 
moved by the words of the Christian railroad 
man. Presently he turned to him and said — 
"Conductor, I have a goodly sum of money on my 
person. I had made all my plans to spend it 
when I reached the city. I was going to pass the 
night in sin and debauchery. But your words 
have touched me. I have changed my mind. As 
soon as I reach that city and have put away my 
horse I shall turn straight home to my wife and 
children. And by the grace of God I shall here- 
after be a different man." 

Out from the innermost being of our railroad 
friend the river of life was flowing, touching and 
quickening another life as it flowed. And why ? 
Because he was yielded to it, and was wiUing to 
let it have its way of service. Is there anything to 
hinder the same in us? Nothing — if we but offer 
it the same yieldingness, the same willingness for 
humble, every-day, unselfish service. 



THE SPIRIT-FILLBD UfB. 93 

This river of life may flow forth from us uncon- 
sciously. 

I was in a great city, teaching. A difficult ques- 
tion of guidance had arisen. Day after day I 
had prayed about it. But the perplexity seemed 
only to increase. At last I came to the danger 
point of anxiety, so earnestly had light been 
sought and found not. And then this happened. 
One morning before the dawn I suddenly awak- 
ened from sleep. The first consciousness that 
came in the darkness was that a heavy wagon was 
rumbling past the window, in the street outside. 
The next was that some one on the wagon — pre- 
sumably its driver — was whistling a tune. And 
the next vivid impression was of the tune he was 
whistling. It was 

"Then we'll trust and obey : 
For there's no other way, 
To be happy in Jesus, 
But to trust and obey." 

Like a flash out from the darkness, came the 
thought as from the Lord, ''Why, my child, this 
is all I expect of you. Simply act upon the light 
as best you see it, and trust Me to lead you. There 
is nothing you need but to trust and obey." At 
once I saw I had been unduly anxious about the 
guidance, and that this was the exact message I 
needed in this time of perplexity and uncertainty. 
Light flooded my pathway. Perplexity made way 
ioT peace. The problem was solved. The rumble 



94 LIFE TALKS. 

of the dray wheels died away in the distance. The 
song of the whistler ceased. But a message had 
gone straight home to my heart more wondrous 
than any sermon ever heard. I do not know 
whether the unseen whistler was a child of God. 
But I believe it. And out from his innermost be- 
ing was flowing that river of life which brought 
into the life of another child of God such a touch 
of life, and light, and refreshing as he who passed 
on into the darkness never knew or dreamed. 

"O Lord," said one of His saints, "I thank 
Thee that Thou hast forgotten all the sins I re- 
member, yet dost remember all the good deeds, I 
have forgotten." That is true. And out from 
our lives, all unconscious to us, may flow a stream 
of influence and blessing of which we may in no 
wise be conscious. But he does not forget it. And 
it shall all be revealed in the day of manifestation 
to our unspeakable joy, and His eternal glory. 

"This learned I from the shadow of a tree, 
Where to and fro swayed on a garden wall 
Our shadow-selves, our influence, may fall 
Where we can never be." 

* * * * 

"And he shewed me a pure rhfer of water of 
life * * * proceeding out of the throne of 
God." Rev. 22: I. 

"This Jesus * * * having received of the 
Father the promise of the Holy Ghost * * * 
hath shed forth this which ye now see." Acts 2: 
32-33. 



THE SPIRIT-FILLED LIFE. 95 

Wonderful river of life! It proceedeth from 
the very throne of the Father. It was received 
by the Son from the Father. It is shed forth by 
the Son upon us other children of the Father. 
And now as we believe — and yield — and serve, it 
will abide — fill — and flow forth from us to the 
sinning, suffering, dying world here below which 
so sorely needs the touch of His divine life 
through us, His Spirit-indwelt children. 



Jacob's Struggle. 



(Gen. 32:24-32.) 

There are four or five great truths that stand 
out in this story of Jacob as the lofty peaks of 
a mountain chain rise above the range of which 
they form a part. The first is, 

* * * * 

There was great selfishness. 

We have no evidence that Jacob's hfe during 
the years just prior to this was one marred by any 
heinous sin. We do not know that it had broken 
out into gross forms of self-indulgence, which 
brought any special judgment of God upon him. 
But it seems to have been like the lives of many 
other children of God: a life which was simply 
lived for self; a life such as the world about us 
lives, and from which world we do not seem to 
be very different as we ourselves live it. "Well," 
we say, "if there was nothing more to smirch Ja- 
cob's Hfe than mere selfishness, that does not 
seem to be much." But that was enough. When 
you recall what this name Jacob means you will 
realize what selfishness means in the life of a 
child of God. He was called "Supplanter." And 
the Holy Spirit could scarcely have chosen a word 
96 



JACOB'S STRUGGLE. 97 

that would more clearly express what selfishness 
does than this — that the self-life is the supplanter 
of the Christ-life. Is it not enough that selfish- 
ness supplants the power of God ? The man who 
lives a purely selfish life has no power in prayer; 
no power in testimony ; no power in work for the 
unsaved; no power for God in the community 
about him. 

Is it not enough that selfishness supplants the 
peace of God? For the fret and care of trying 
to serve two masters — of being called by God's 
name and yet trying to live in God's world just 
as the worldling is living — this gives a man no 
peace. "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O 
God," said Augustine, "and our souls are rest- 
less till they rest in Thee." And until a child of 
God's life rests in God and in God alone, he will 
not find that peace of God which God wants to 
give. 

Is it not enough that selfishness supplants the 
loz'e of God ? For the two cannot co-exist. God 
is utterly unselfish. God is love — love of others. 
And when we live a life that is purely a life for 
self, the love of God cannot fill our hearts, and 
flow through those hearts to others. 

Is it not enough that selfishness supplants the 
purpose of God? The selfish man sits in his 
cushioned pew and worships God in his way. 
But to enter into the purpose of Christ for a lost 
world ; to share the agony of Christ for lost souls ; 
to join in the intercession of Christ for the giv- 



98 UFB TALKS. 

ing of the Gospel to this dark world ; to become 
a partner in the purposes of God — that never en- 
ters into the life of selfishness. Is it not enough 
that selfishness should supplant the life of God 
in this way? 

Moreover God has set His stamp upon selfish- 
ness as the supreme foe of Himself. There are 
three deadly enemies of God : the world, the flesh, 
and the devil. We are in the world, but God 
tells us not to be of it. We may resist the devil, 
and he will flee from us. But we must renounce 
the self within, if God is to have the complete 
victory in our lives. Over the door of the In- 
ferno one saw: "All ye who enter here abandon 
hope." Over the portal of Christian discipleship 
is written : "All ye who enter here abandon self." 
Some one has well said : "There is a cross and a 
throne in every heart. We may put Christ on 
the throne and self on the cross. Or we may put 
self on the throne, and Christ on the cross." Self- 
ishness is indeed the supplanter of God in the 
soul. God always dwelt in the tabernacle in His 
shekinah glory and presence. Yet there was a 
veil that hid Him from those who entered there 
with Him. So God is always dwelling in the 
heart of His child, but the veil that darkens, and 
mars, and limits the manifestation of His pres- 
ence is the veil of the flesh — the self-life within 
us. Wherefore when God, who is absolute and 
utter unselfishness, meets a child of His. like 
Jacob, given up to selfishness, there can be but 



JACOB'S STRUGGLE. 99 

one issue. God enters into controversy with that 
life of selfishness. And thus, next: — 

* * * * 

There was a great struggle. 

For as we read on in the narrative we find that 

God zuas striving with Jacob. 

"'God striveth," the margin of the Revision 
puts it. We do not read it so. But God does. 
Listen: "And Jacob was left alone, and there 
wrestled a man (the God-man) with him (Ja- 
cob) until the breaking of the day. And when 
He (the God-man) saw that He prevailed not 
against him (Jacob) He touched the hollow of 
his (Jacob's) thigh: and the hollow of Jacob's 
thigh was out of joint." This is God's story. 
How clear it is! There was a man wrestling 
against Jacob all the long night. And Jacob's 
wrestling was a resistive wrestling. It was not 
Jacob wrestling with God for a blessing. It was 
God wrestling with Jacob to break down and put 
away from his life the things that were hindering 
the ever present and ever gracious purpose of 
God to bless His child with the greatest possible 
measure of blessing. How much m.cre consistent 
wnth the nature and love of God is this ! A love 
which is more eager and willing to bless His 
children than they themselves are to be blessed. 
*'God striveth." How this God of grace strives 
with the sinner! How he strives with that un- 



loo LIPE TALKS. 

ceasing inner voice of the Spirit in the soul! 
How He strives in the tender entreaties of loved 
ones. How He strives in all the vicissitudes of 
life, death, suffering, affliction, and the like! 
Tenderly, patiently, lovingly through all the long, 
rebellious, weary years of rejection does God 
strive to win the soul of the sinner from death to 
life. But let it be noted that in this instance 

God was striving not for a soul, hut for a life. 

For a man may be a child of God, yet not a 
dedicated one. He may give up his sins, yet not 
himself. His soul may be saved, but his life 
unyielded to God. Jacob was such a child of 
God. He had been saved long ere this. God 
was not striving for his soul. He was striving 
for his life. He was striving to win him away 
from a past which had been lived for self, to a 
future w^hich should be lived for God and His 
glory. 

If you turn to the margin of James 4 : 5 you 
will find a beautiful rendering which reads like 
this : ''That Spirit which He made to dwell within 
us yearneth for us with jealous en\^." What a 
picture of the Holy Spirit dwelling within God's 
child! Like a wife who, when she sees her hus- 
band giving his affections to any other than her- 
self to whom they solely belong, feels her heart 
go out in jealous, wifely envy for those affections. 
Or like a mother who. when she sees her boy 
gi\ing up his life to reckless, out-breaking sin, 



JACOB'S STRUGGLE. loi 

burns with earnest, jealous longing for that life 
that is yielded to evil-doing. Just so, when the 
Holy Spirit comes into one who has been saved 
by the blood of Jesus Christ, who has been re- 
deemed as a precious possession for God Himself, 
and then sees such a life going out toward 
the world, toward its frivolity, its foolishness; 
that self-same Holy Spirit is filled with godly, 
jealous yearning for that life. There is a godly, 
jealous envy for the years which the world is 
stealing away while He yearns to redeem them; 
for the talents which are being wasted while He 
is yearning to use them in His kingdom ; for the 
soul which the world is staining and marring 
while He is yearning to conform it to the glorious 
image of His Son. And hence the mighty striv- 
ing of the Spirit for His own. 

That is exactly what occurs in your life and in 
my life. How often has the Holy Spirit yearned 
for us, pleading with us to give that life to Him, 
to turn away from the world, to turn away from 
its emptiness, to give ourselves as a burnt-offer- 
ing to God, that Jesus Christ may have His own 
blessed way with the life He has bought with His 
own precious blood. That is God's picture of 
this struggle — a God of love struggling to break 
down in His child's life the thing that was hin- 
dering Him from having His full and perfect 
way of blessing, and power, and ministry through 
that child. And we need only look within to see 
that this carnal mind — this self-life — is the su- 



102 LIFE TALKS. 

preme foe struggling against God, to hinder and 
baffle the mighty purpose of God in our lives. 

God's child was resisting^ 

That was what Jacob was doing. All the night 
long he was fighting a desperate battle against 
God. There was no gleam of spear, no clash of 
sword, no hissing of dart. But the fiercest fight 
of Jacob's life was on and on to death. We can 
almost hear his hard, quick breathing. We can al- 
most see the set teeth ; the straining, writhing body 
of the wrestler ; the desperate countenance fixed in 
its purpose of resistance. With every atom of 
power and persistence within him, Jacob was re- 
sisting God — the God who wanted to bless himf 
And so do we. God strives to wrest from our 
hands the poison draught of pleasure which the 
world puts to our lips, and we resist Him. God 
tries to overthrow some secret idol that we are 
worshipping, and we resist Him. God would take 
from our grasp some edged tool of Satan behind 
whose glitter death lurks for us, and we resist 
Him. God takes us by the hand to lead us away, 
in love, from the snares and pitfalls which the 
lusts of the flesh spread for our unwary feet, and 
we resist Him. And then as we battle against the 
Spirit of God there comes into our lives the next 
crisis which came into Jacob's at this point. 



JACOB'S STRUGGLE. 103 

There zvas a grkat breakdown. 

*^e touched the hollow of Jacob's thigh: and 
the hollow of Jacob's thigh was out of joint." 
Jacob broke down under the hand of the mighty 
wrestler. We said to a physician friend one day, 
as we were chatting about this: — ''Doctor, what 
is the exact significance of God's touching Jacob 
upon the sinew of his thigh?" He replied: "The 
sinew of the thigh is the strongest in the human 
body. A horse could scarcely tear away the limb, 
pulling it straight. Only as he twisted it could he 
tear it apart." Ah, I see, God has to break us 
down at the strongest part of our self-life before 
He can have His own way of blessing with us. 

We talk about surrender. We talk about sur- 
rendering all. But when it comes to the core of 
the matter, "all" usually means some one supreme 
point of issue between us and God; some one 
strong citadel in which the self -life is entrenched ; 
some one key point which God must carry by as- 
sault before He can have His way with us. That 
great thigh sinew — like the trunk on which a tree 
stands as the storms assail it — like the column on 
which a great house stays its massiveness ; that 
great sinew straining all night against God — 
bringing to bear all the resistive power of the 
wrestler against God — God touched that and 
broke him down. Just so does God deal with us. 
That pride — God touches, and breaks it down 
until the self -life is humbled in the dust. That 



104 LIFE TALKS. 

money the Christian business man is piling up 
until covetousness is eating into his heart like a 
canker — God touches it, and it takes wings and 
flies away. That idol which self is worshipping — 
God touches it, and like Dagon, hurls it to the 
ground, maimed and mutilated. That strength in 
which self revels — God lays His finger upon it and 
withers it, and self is brought to helplessness. Ah, 
we do not know how to deal with the self -life. 
But God does. And He takes away the thing 
upon which it feeds, and robs it of the power upon 
which it depends, and cuts away the props upon 
which it stands, until it lies in helplessness at His 
feet. 

Here is a Christian business man. He has 
been redeemed. His mouth is full of praise and 
joyful testimony at the first. But he goes out 
into the world. He begins to live just as the 
worldly man lives. It is all gaining and no giv- 
ing ; it is all hoarding, and no spending and being 
spent for God. It is all for self and 
none for God. He keeps on in this path. And 
bye-and-bye his lips are sealed in the testimony 
meeting. You hear no voice of prayer from him. 
His conscious communion with God is broken. 
Bye-and-bye coldness steals into his heart and he 
becomes a powerless man. And then some day 
a strange thing happens. Something comes 
along and sweeps away the wealth. Some idol 
is touched and it withers. Perhaps the strength 
is laid low ; perhaps sickness befalls. The fur- 



JACOB'S STRUGGLE. 105 

nace and the crucible are put to work. And 
people wonder why that man's life is in such a 
place of affliction. But God does not wonder. 
God knows what He is doing; what He is per- 
mitting. And when that man, prostrate and 
broken, is brought to the end of himself in help- 
lessness, you will see a new thing. Into that 
man's life come transformation, power, blessing, 
and a new and living walk with God, all because 
God has broken him down at the point of his 
self-life that was holding him for self and the 
world. God has to rob some men of about all 
they have, before He can get them for Himself. 
As long as it is God and something, we cling to 
the something. But when it becomes God or 
nothing, then we turn to God because there is 
nothing else left. There are some lives that turn 
to Him simply and sweetly in fullness of devotion 
from the beginning. There are other lives which 
God has to deal with as He dealt with Jacob. 
Often, what we will not yield God has to take; 
what we will not give up God has to break up. 
A godly woman used to say: "God has not only 
pulled me up by the roots, but He seems to be 
shaking the dirt off the roots." "Take me, 
break me, make me," seems to be the prayer 
some of us have to pray, before God has His per- 
fect way with us. 



io6 LIFE TALKS. 

There was a great victory. 

It was the victory of love — the love that imll 
not let us go. How gladly would Jacob have 
broken away from that mighty grasp. How 
quickly would he have fled away into the darkness 
and the night if he could. But the unseen wres- 
tler would not let him go until He had con- 
quered him — because He loved him. A kind- 
hearted surgeon is pressing the keen knife into 
the cancer, which is eating out our life. He holds 
our struggHng hand with steady grasp. He will 
not let us go, however much we are suffering. 
We look up into his face and cry out, "I suffer; 
let me go." But He says, "I will not let you go 
until I have my way of blessing with you. I will 
not let you go — because I love you." Another 
loving hand is pressing a bitter potion to our lips. 
We cry again, "I do not like it; let me go." A 
loving voice answers : "A deadly poison is burn- 
ing in your veins. This is the antidote for it. 
I will not let you go — because I love you." Even 
so do we look up to God and cry : "Why do you 
keep me in this fiery furnace! Why do you let 
these heavy burdens oppress me? Why do you 
suffer me to be so sorely and constantly tested 
and tried? Why do you not relieve me? Why 
do you not let me go ?" And the voice comes to us 
**I will not let you go until I have won you for 
Myself. I will not let you go until I have purged 
you of yofir dross. I will not let you go until 



JACOB'S STRUGGLE. 107 

I have humbled and crushed to the earth the self- 
Hfe, which is the deadhest foe to My Hfe and 
power within you. I will not let you go because 
I love you, and am seeking to win you from that 
which is empty, hollow, and unsatisfying, to that 
which is full, and rich, and blessed in Christ 
Jesus." 



There was great power in prayer. 

But had not Jacob prayed all night? Not he. 
He had striven all night; and against God. But 
it was only when the thigh-collapsing touch of 
God came that Jacob clung and prayed, and was 
victorious. For the birth-place of prayer is help- 
lessness. Prayer comes to its own; enters into 
its lawful heritage of mighty power only with 
men who have reached the end of themselves and 
are clinging to God. Power in prayer did not 
come to Jacob while he strove in his own strength, 
but when he clung in his own helplessness. What 
poor humans are w^e, that God must needs let us 
be driven into the stress of necessity and help- 
lessness because in no other way can he constrain 
us to betake ourselves to prayer to Him! Yet 
it is even so. Do we pray when the wind is 
a-beam, the skies fair, and our ship running free 
before the breeze? Nay, but when the mast is 
overboard, the rudder gone, and the ship in the 
trough — then we pray. Do we pray when our 
lovf^d ones are in pr^sp'^ritv, health, and strength? 



io8 LIPB TALKS. 

"Nay, but when the sober- faced physician shakes 
his head, and says he has done all he can, and 
death's shadow settles down over the chamber of 
a precious one — then we pray. ' Strength is self- 
reliant and thinks it needs no God. But w^eak- 
ness is driven to God-reliance and there learns 
the secrets of the prayer life. Helplessness be- 
gets dependence — dependence leads to prayer : and 
prayer brings power. Out of our own insuffi- 
ciency into God's sufficiency, by the pathway of 
prayer, is the secret of power. Wherefore self- 
strength may be worse than weakness. For the 
weak man learns to cling and pray. But the 
strong one stays self-centred and misses God. 



Faith. 



"Por ye arc all sons of God through i^aith in 
Christ Jesus." — Cal. 3 : 26. 

The V\'ord of God does not much concern 
itself with definitions of faith. But it is often 
illustrating and picturing faith. And none of its 
pictures is simpler or more beautifully clear than 
that one in Heb. 12 : 2. — "Looking unto Jesus." 

Faith is looking unto jEsus. 

Exactly what is it to look unto Jesus with the 
faith that saves the soul? Let us illustrate. You 
owe a thousand dollars. You give your creditor 
a note for it. That note is endorsed by a rich 
friend. Suppose it to be in the days when im- 
prisonment for debt is in force. By and by you 
become bankrupt. Not one dollar do you have 
to meet your obligation. As the day approaches 
upon which your note falls due your creditor be- 
gins to harass you. He exacts every dollar. He 
threatens 3^ou with imprisonment if you fail to 
pay. Straightv/ay your heart is filled with anx- 
ious care. You cannot possibly pay the debt. As 
the hour draws near your distress of soul grows 
almost unbearable as you think of the suffering 
of your loved ones whom you have unwittingly 
109 



no LIPE TALKS. 

involved in your fate. But now you remember 
that you have a kind friend as endorser on your 
note. You go to him in your crisis. At once he 
says — "My friend, do not worry one moment 
longer, I am your endorser on this note. I have 
ample assets to meet it. Just look to me to pay 
it." 

At once your whole attitude changes. You 
leave off worrying. Peace fills your heart. An- 
other man has' taken the whole burden. And 
thus it is lifted entirely from you. You have 
ceased to try. You simply trust. That is, you 
are looking to another, and to him alone to pay 
your debt. Hold before your mind this thought 
of a man looking to his endorser to pay his note. 
Hold it there not for one moment, but for several. 
Hold it until you have a sharp, clear picture of 
what your attitude of mind would be if you were 
thus depending upon a friend to pay your note. 
Do you grasp it clearly? Can you think it 
through? Can you put yourself exactly in that 
place? Have you held it there now until there 
is no blur nor fog to the mental picture of just 
how you lifonld look to an endorser to pay your 
note? Well, that is faith. 

:>: ^ ;); :{: 

faith is DEPENDING. 

Surelv. That is exactly what looking to an- 
other means. That is precisely what the maker 



FAITH. Ill 

of the note does toward his endorser. It is 
relying upon another. It is counting upon him. 
It is throwing your weight upon him, and his 
word. It is depending upon him to do the very 
thing he has promised. You wish to send your 
httle child down street in the city. A friend 
offers to take her in charge. You give her into 
his keeping, saying, "I look to you to take care 
of my child." You simply mean that you de- 
pend upon him to do it. You break a limb by 
accident. Your friend the surgeon comes to set 
it. You say, ^'Doctor, I look to you to set that 
limb aright." You are about to take a journey. 
You take your seat in the train. You say to the 
conductor, "Friend, I look to you to bring me to 
my destination.' In all these cases where you 
are looking to others you mean that you are 
depending upon them. You are counting upon 
them to do the thing in question, and are making 
no effort whatever to do it yourself. This is ex- 
actly what looking to Jesus for salvation is. 
He is a specialist in saving men. That is His 
business and His alone. "He shall save his people 
from their sins." Therefore you are to look 
to Him, count upon Him, depend upon Him to 
save your soul just as simply, helplessly, and ab- 
solutely as you, a bankrupt debtor, would de- 
pend upon your rich endorser to pay your note. 
And when a man passes from this looking at 
Jesus as a historical personage, to this dependent 
looking to Jesus to save his soul, he passes from 



112 LIFE TALKS. 

the faith of the devils who beHeve and tremble, to i 

the faith of God's sons who believe and are saved. \ 

\ 
* * * * ! 

Faith is looking away from everything else \ 
unto Jesus. \ 

The word ''looking unto" has a meaning which j 
is not expressed in our own version of the Bible. ' 
It means not only looking unto but "looking | 
away." ''O^^-looking unto Jesus," is the ren- i 
dering in Luther's translation. The man who is ■ 
looking unto one thing or person, must look \ 
azvay from everything else. When you trust an- 
other to guide you on a dark night you look j 
away from your own knowledge of the way unto ' 
his. When you put yourself under the instruc- 
tion of a great teacher you look azsxiy from your i 
own ignorance unto his wisdom. When in weak- , 
ness you lean upon the strong arm of a friend i 
you look away from your own helplessness unto i 
his strength. So when you look to Jesus for ! 
salvation you must needs look to Him alone. | 
You look away from your own merits, away i 
from your own efforts and strugglings, away I 
from your own self -righteousness — unto Jesus. 
Especially is it true that : — i 

Faith is looking away from your own works — 
unto JKSUS. 
Tt is Jesus who saves. And faith is looking] 
unto Him for salvation. Therefore we do need' 



FAITH. 113 

to steadily look away from our own works — 
unto Jesus. Nothing in the Word of God is 
clearer than this. "We reckon therefore that a 
man is justified by faith, apart from the works 
of the law." (Rom. 3:28, R. V.) "But to 
him that worketh not, but believeth on him that 
justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for 
righteousness." (Rom. 4:5.) "The blessedness 
of the man unto whom God reckoneth righteous- 
ness apart from works/' (Rom. 4:6, R. V.) 

And why does God lay such stress upon our 
looking away from works unto Jesus in order 
to be saved? Simply because the state of the 
lost soul is such that good works utterly fall short 
of meeting that soul's supreme need. For con- 
sider a moment these two great facts concerning 
the unsaved soul. 

The unsaved man has a sin-stained past. 

The unsaved man is condemned to death. 

How wholly insufficient are good works to 
meet this dual need of the soul. Will a good 
deed wash away guilt? Can acts of charity 
cleanse the blood-stained past? Can works of 
mercy purge a conscience crimsoned with sin? 
Can anything a man may do or be atone for sin? 
Nay, "without shedding of blood there is no 
remission of sins" Jesus is our only sin bear- 
er. Jesus alone is the purger of the soul from 
guilt. We must look away from works unto 
Him alone. And so too of the sentence of death 
upon every lost soul because of sin. "The soul 



114 LIFE TALKS. 

that sinneth it shall die." Can any good deed 
lift a soul out from under the awful shadow of 
its sentence of death? Though we give our 
bodies to be burned, will that do it? Though 
we bestow all our goods to feed the poor, will 
that do it? Will a genial disposition, or a kind 
heart, or a loving ministry to the suffering and 
needy, will these do it? Nay. A lofty purpose, 
a moral life, a kind heart, can never lift that 
condemnation from the guilty soul. But Jesus 
can lift it. For He Himself has suffered the 
death sentence. He has suffered it in our place. 
And he who believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ 
"shall not come into condemnation but is passed 
from death unto Ufe." (Jno. 5:24.) Again: — 



Faith is looking away from your own :?aith — 
unto Jesus. 

Some people try to have faith in their own 
faith, instead of faith in Jesus Christ. They 
keep looking for a subjective condition. They 
ought to be looking to an objective Christ. True 
faith pays no attention whatever to itself. It 
centers all its gaze upon Christ. For faith is not 
our savior. Faith is simply an attitude of the 
soul, through which Jesus saves. When Satan 
cannot beguile us in any other way he gets us 
to scrutinizing our faith, instead of looking unto 
Christ. That man has the strongest heart who 
is the least conscious of its existence. And th.t 



FAITH. 115 

faith is the strongest which pays no attention to 
itself. You may weaken the heart by centering 
your anxious attention upon it. So nothing will 
quicker weaken faith than the constant endeavor 
to discover it. It is like the child's digging up of 
seed to see if it is growing. It is a curiosity 
which brings disaster to the seed. It is not a 
man's faith, but his faith in Christ which saves 
him. To be looking unto Christ is faith. To be 
looking unto anything else, even unto faith, is a 
trouble to the soul. 

And is not this the deep and real significance 
of our Lord's comparison of faith with the mus- 
tard seed? When He tells us of the power that 
would come to us if we "have faith as a grain of 
mustard seed," what does he mean? Surely not 
that we are to have only a little faith. For He 
always rebukes "little faith." But rather He 
is saying this : "Hold or regard your faith as 
you regard, and look upon the grain of mustard 
seed." And how is that? Why does Christ 
choose so trifling a symbol of faith as the mus- 
tard seed? Because He is contrasting faith and 
God. The emphasis of His teaching here is not 
on the "have faith," but on "have faith in God.'' 
He is not turning our eyes toward faith. He is 
turning our faith toward God. And so nothing 
but the tiniest and most insignificant of seeds 
could symbolize the utter littleness, yea nothing- 
ness of faith, as compared with the omnipotent 
God who works through our faith. But how 



ii6 LIFE TALKS. 

else is faith like the mustard seed? Plainly in 
this. That each, however insignificant in itself, 
is the channel of life through which flours the 
life of God. The wonder of faith, and the won- 
der of the mustard seed is the same. It is that 
though nothing in themselves God can, and does, 
work through them. 

Therefore do not worry about your faith. Do 
not always be scanning it. Look away from it 
altogether — unto Jesus. For faith alone is 
naught. It is only faith in Jesus that counts. 
Take care that you are depending upon Jesus to 
save. And faith will take care of itself. 

^ :*; 5jc ^ 

Faith is not clinging — it is letting go. 

Somewhere we have read a story like this. A 
traveler upon a lonely road was set upon by 
bandits and robbed him of his all. They then 
led him into the depths of the forest. There, in 
the darkness, they tied a rope to the limb of a 
great tree, and bade him catch hold of the end 
of it. Swinging him out into the blackness of 
surrounding space, they told him he was hanging 
over the brink of a giddy precipice. The mo- 
ment he let go he would be dashed to pieces on 
the rocks below. And then they left him. His 
soul was filled with horror at the awful doom 
impending. He clutched despairingly the end of 
the swaying rope. But each dreadful moment 
onlv made his fate more sure. His strength 



FAITH. 117 

steadily failed. At last he could hold on no 
longer. The end had come. His clenched fingers 
relaxed their convulsive grip. He fell — six inches 
— ^to the solid earth at his feet! It was only a 
ruse of the robbers to gain time in escaping. And 
when he let go it was not to death, but to the 
safety which had been waiting him through all his 
time of terror. 

Friend, clutching will not save you. It is only 
Satan's trick to keep you from being saved. And 
all the while is your heart not full of fear? Let 
go! That is God's plan to save you. "And 
will I not fall to death ?" you say. Nay. Under- 
neath h-^— Jesus! He is the Rock of your salva- 
tion. And when in sheer helplessness you let 
go, and fall upon Him fear goes, and death goes, 
and safety comes forever. For H^^-not your 
clinging, but — He shall save His people from 
their sins." 

^ ^ ^ ^ 

Faith is not trying — it is ceasing. 

A drowning boy was struggling in the water. 
On shore stood his mother in an agony of fright 
and grief. By her side stood a strong man 
seemingly indifferent to the boy's fate. Again 
and again did the suffering mother appeal to him 
to saye her boy. But he made no move. By and 
by the desperate struggles of the boy began to 
abate. He was losing strength. Presently he 
arose to the surface, weak and helpless. At once 



ii8 LIFE TALKS. 

the strong man leaped into the stream and 
brought the boy in safety to the shore. "Why 
did you not save my boy sooner?" cried the now 
grateful mother. "IMadam, I could not save your 
boy so long as he struggled. He would have 
dragged us both to certain death. But when he 
grew weak, and ceased to struggle, then it w^as 
easy to save him." 

To struggle to save ourselves is simply to 
hinder Christ from saving us. To come to the 
place of faith we must pass from the place of 
effort to the place of accepted helplessness. Our 
very efforts to save ourselves turn us aside from 
that attitude of helpless dependence upon Christ 
which is the one attitude we need to take in order 
that He may save us. It is only when we "cease 
from our own works" and depend thus helplessly 
upon Him that we realize how perfectly able He 
is to save without any aid from us. 

;!; ^ ^ ^ 

Faith is not doing — it is resting. 

When work is ended then comes rest. So is 
it with the work of redemption. Jesus has fin- 
ished that work. He has borne our sins. He 
has died in our place. Therefore on Calvary He 
cried out, "It is finished." And it is ours now 
to rest, for the work is done. "Rest in the 
Lord," is the word for us. But what does a man 
do when he rests? He does not do anything. 



FAITH. 119 

He quits doing. He throws his weary body o-n a 
chair, a couch, a bed, and lets that hold him. He 
ceases all trying to hold himself. And so what do 
you do when you rest in Christ for salvation? 
You do not do anything. You throw yourself, 
your weight, on Christ and let Him do. You 
simply — rest. For while you are trying you are not 
resting. And when you begin to rest, you cease try- 
ing. Wherefore "we which have believed do enter 
into rest/' And the man who believes in Christ 
does indeed rest in Him for the salvation of his 
soul. 

* * * * 

Faith is not fe:eling — it is taking God's word. 

In a gospel meeting a penitent woman was 
seeking salvation. The evangelist quoted to her 
anxious soul those precious words of Isaiah 53: 
6, ''The Lord hath laid on Him (Christ) the 
iniquity of us alL" He showed her that though 
she was a sinner and had gone astray like a lost 
sheep, yet God's word clearly stated that all her 
sins had been laid upon Jesus Christ. "The Lord" 
had done this apart from any feeling or emotion 
of hers. All she need do was to take God's word 
and depend upon Christ for this remission of sin. 
She seemingly did so, and went home rejoicing. 
The next morning she came downstairs with tears 
in her eyes. The old burden of anxiety for sins 
had come back. Her little boy, who had been with 



120 UPB TALKS. 

her in the meeting the night before, noticed her 
grief. "Mamma, what is troubling you?" "Oh, 
last night I felt I was saved. But this morning it 
all seems like a dream. I fear I am deceived." 
"Mamma," said the little lad, "get your Bible and 
turn to Isaiah 53 : 6." And she did so, and read 
"The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us 
all." "Mamma, is the verse still there?" "Yes, 
my son." ^'Then your sins are still on Jesus," 
said the wise lad. The mother saw the truth. 
She took God's word, without regard to her feel- 
ings. And then God's peace came to stay. 

Friend, your salvation rests not upon your 
changeable feelings, but upon God's unchangeable 
fact. The fact of God is that Christ has borne 
your sins, and has died in your place. No feeling 
of yours, whether of joy or grief, exultation or 
despondency, peace or distress, can possibly affect 
that great fact. Therefore let not one fragment 
of your faith hinge upon your own moods, or 
emotions. But let it rest implicitly in God's word. 
For in that it will find perfect peace. And it will 
find it in that alone. 



. . The day you turn your face from sin to God: 
the day you look away from your ozvn works, 
your own feelings, even your own faith — unto 
Jesus' the day you cease clinging, struggling and 
trying- the day you see that faith is simply de- 
pending upon Jesus as a bankrupt debtor depends 



FAITH. 121 

upon his endorser-' the day you begin to so depend 
upon and confess Christ as your Savior-' that day 
God mill save your soul, and through that self- 
same simple faith mil m^ke you — ^a son of god. 



"The Three-fold Secret," a companion volume by the 
same author, sent to any address on application, upon 
the same condition as "Life Talks." 



Leaflets by the Same Jiuthott 

"A Comforting Truth'' 

"BewSving Is Seeing'' 

"Faith'' 

"Give God a Chance" 

"Practice of Prayer" 

"Prayer" 

"Prayer and Heaung" 

"Safety" 

"Surrender" 

"The God-Pi,anned Life" 

"The SpiRiT-Fai,ED Life" 

"The Yiei^ded Life" 



lE)a88 Ht BlonQ 

[If you wish to write the names of a list of friend^ 
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